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3"^ V/ 



GREECE AND TURKEY. 



^ PICTURESaUE SKETCHES 



IN 



GREECE AND TURKEY, 



BY 



AUBREY DE VERE, ESQ. 



PHILADELPHIA: 
A. HART, LATE CAREY AND HART. 

1850. . 



« II1A9 
\ZSO 







PHILADELPHIA: 
T. K. AND P. G. COLLINS, PRINTERS. 



m 



WI^lM^XwN 



CONTENTS 



CHAPTER I. 

0, THE IONIAN ISLANDS. 

Sail down the Adriatic — Arrival at Corfu — Scenery of Corfu — Character 
and aspect of the Ionian Greeks — Town of Corfu — The palace of the 
Lord High Commissioner — A reception at the government-house — 
Prorogation of Parliament — University — Sunset at Corfu — Ancient 
remains — Temple of Neptune — Nereido Castro — Departure from 
Corfu — Paxos — Leucadia — Sappho's rock — Cephalonia — Zante — An 
English steamer . . . . . .13 

CHAPTER II. 

FROM PATRAS TO ATHENS. 

Missolonghi — Patras — An Albanian guide — Antiquities — Scenery be- 
tween Patras and Vostizza — Lepanto — Territory of the Achaian 
League — English and Greek mountains — Site of Sicyon — Ancient 
remains — Robbers — Character of our Albanian guide — Corinth — 
The AcropoHs of Corinth — Ruins of temples — The Fountain of 
Peirene — Callimachi — Arrival before Athens . . .29 

CHAPTER III. 

THE ACROPOLIS OF ATHENS. 

Relation of the Acropolis to Athens — Dimensions of the Acropolis — The 
walls of Themistocles — The Propylea — The Temple of " Victory 
without Wings" — The Parthenon — The Panathenaic procession — 
Fragmentary sculpture . . . . . .48 

1* 



Tl CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER lY. 

THE ACROPOLIS OF ATHENS. 

Temple of Minerva Polias — The relics it once contained — The porch of 
the Caryatides — The theatre of Herodes Atticus — Cave of Pan — Cave 
of Aglaurus — Tragic theatre of Athens — The Acropolis as it once was 
—View from the Acropolis — Lycabettus — Spirit of Athenian religion. 

61 

CHAPTER Y. 

ATHENS. 

Temple of Jupiter Olympius — Practical benefit resulting from great na- 
tional monuments- — The Ilissus — A rural festival near Athens 76 

CHAPTER YI. 

ATHENS. 

Athens — The Stoa of Adrian— The gate of the Agora — The monument 
of Philopappus — Stadium — Temple of Theseus — Temple of the 
Winds — The lantern of Demosthenes — The Pnyx — The prison of 
Socrates — The religion of Socrates — The Areopagus . 86 

CHAPTER YII. 

ATHENS. 

A ball at the Palace — A Greek chief — Lord Byron in Greece — The 
plain of Athens — The Cephysus^ — The farm of Plato — Estate and 
residence of an English settler — Progress of civilization — Position of 
the Greek Church — Influence of French literature . . 101 

• 

CHAPTER Yin. 

MARATHON. 

The neighborhood of Athens — Site of Aphidnee — expedition to Marathon 
— The plains of Marathon — The tumulus — Influence of the battle of 
Marathon on Greece — Wars not unmixed evils — Assistance rendered 
by the god Pan to the Greeks . . . .115 



CONTENTS. Vll 

CHAPTER IX. 

ELEUSIS. 

Degree in which the physical characteristics of Attica moulded the 
Athenian character — Its shallow soil, its light air, its quarries, its 
mines — Its freedom from rapacious aggression, its dependence on 
maritime enterprise — The road to Eleusis — Athenian landscape — An- 
cient procession to Eleusis — Its position — Ancient remains — Cha- 
racter of the Eleusinian mysteries — Ceremonies attached to them — 
Relation of the Eleusinian teaching to Christian doctrines — Pagan- 
ism a witness to Christianity — Eleusinian priesthood , . 128 

CHAPTER X. 

THE PEIREUS— ATHENS. 

The Peireus — Disappearance of the ancient fortifications — Incomplete- 
ness of History — Ruined temple iiear the Peireus — Tomb of Themi- 
stocles — Greek politics— Small progress which the nation has made — = 
Greek education — Mr. Hill — An Athenian school — Greek hymns and 
music — A Philhellenist — The modern language — its relations with 
the ancient — Advantages which modern Greece may derive from her 
ancient literature — Benefit from select study . . .141 

CHAPTER XL 

JOURNEY FROM ATHENS TO NAUPLIA. 

Lazaretto at the Peireus — Greek guardianos — An old Frenchman — Sail 
to Epidaurus — Ancient character and scenery of Epidaurus — Ride 
from Epidaurus to Nauplia — Extraordinary vegetation — Remarkable 
sunset — Gulf of Nauplia — its fortifications — Memorials of Venice — 
the adieus of my French friend — Good fortune in picking up a tra- 
veling servant . . . . • . 156 

CHAPTER XII. 

TIRYNTHUS— ARGOS— MYCEN^. 

The Ruins of Tirynthus — Early specimens of the Arch — The Plain of 
Argos — Theatre carved out of the rock — Acropolis of Argos — The 



Vlll CONTENTS. 

Hereum — Antiquity of Argos — Homeric recollections — Legendary 
History— A night on the Argolic plain — Contrast between Italian and 
Grecian scenery — Colossal ruins of Mycense — Gateway of the Lions — 
Tomb of Agamemnon — Stones of its vault . . . 169 

CHAPTER XIII. 

EXPEDITION TO DELPHI. 

Arts of antiquity — Way to Corinth — Nemea — Character of Greek 
mountains — Greek scenery and Greek character — Corinth — Lutrar- 
ki — A child's consolation — Embarkation for Delphi — Arrival at Sa- 
lona — Gulf of Lepanto and surrounding mountains — Flowers in un- 
reclaimed lands — Greek agriculturists^ — Plain of "Cirrha — A Parnas- 
sian ravine — Rock temples — Castri — Site of Delphi — The Sacred 
Cleft and Oracular Shrine — Loss of its memorials — Fountain of Cas- 
talia ........ 180 

CHAPTER Xiy. 
RETURN FROM DELPHL 

Character of Parnassian scenery — An olive wood — A storm — Dance of 
the Greek boatmen — Revels on the shore by night — Moonrise — Phi- 
losophy of the oracle — Demoniacal inspiration — An unnecessary sup- 

' position — An imperfect faith ever placed in oracles — Physical effects 
of the Delphic vapor — An extraordinary penetration assisted by im- 
posture . . . . . . .195 

CHAPTER XV. 

VOYAGE FROM DELPHI TO PATRAS. 

Continuance of the storm — Ineffectual attempt to put to sea — Parnas- 
sian harbor — Another vain attempt at navigation — Coast scenery of 
Parnassus — Sunsets during a week of storm — Arrival at Lepanto — 
A calm — Reflections on Greece — The advantages derived from its 
small size — Proximity of its rival States — Benefits from compression 
— Variety of Greek institutions — Character of the Greek confederation 
— Benefits resulting from the independence of its several States — Ad- 
vantages which the republican principle derived from the small size 



CONTENTS. ix 

of the Greek States — The Athenian Government no Democracy — Ar- 
rival at Patras' — -Departure of the Austrian steamer — Return to Corfu. 

205 

CHAPTER XYI. 

VOYAGE TO CONSTANTINOPLE. 

Sail to Syra — A strange accident — The Lazaretto of Syria — Aspect of 
the city by night — The Island of Syra — -Views of the Egean — Sail 
to Smyrna — Accident by sea — A boat upset — Loss of an anchor- 
Greek sailor saved — The Bay of Smyrna — The City — Spot of St. Po- 
lycarp's martyrdom — Views from the hills of Smyrna — Its burial- 
grounds — Bazaar — Mosques — French and Greek -diplomacy — Plain 
of Troy — The Dardanelles — Sestos — The sea of Marmora — A Turk- 
ish woman and her children . . . . .219 

CHAPTER XYII. 

CONSTANTINOPLE. 

First appearance of the city as seen from the water — Rich intermingling 
of architectural and natural beauty — Brilliant coloring of the scene — 
Contrast between Constantinople and Venice — Also between Con- 
stantinople and the ancient cities of Greece — Vast size of Constanti- 
nople and its suburbs — A traveler's disappointment on landing at 
Constantinople — Interior of Constantinople — Its narrow streets — The 
character of nations illustrated by the aspect of their capitals — Pro- 
minent characteristics of Constantinople — Mosques — Baths — Tombs — 
Tomb of the Sultan Solyman .... 239 

CHAPTER XVIII. 

CONSTANTINOPLE. 

General aspect of the city and its inhabitants — Veiled women — Car- 
riages drawn by oxen — The bazaar — Its armory — Method of deal- 
ing — The Seraglio — Palace of Beshik-Tash — The Sultan — An attempt 
to withstand the reforms — An imposture detected — Effect of the 
Sultan Mahmoud's reforms — Hills above Constantinople — Views of 
the city from the heights — Character of Constantinople — A confla- 
gration ....... 250 



X CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER XIX. 

THE BOSPHORUS. 

Scenery of the Bosphorus — Palaces on the Bosphorus — Festal groups on 
its banks — Varieties of female beauty in the East — Turkish women 
— Armenian women — Character of female subjection in the East — 
Eastern habits of reverence and secrecy — Sunset on the Bosphorus — 
Therapia — Historic trees — The "Giant's Mount" — -Genoese Castle — - 
The Black Sea — The Symplegades — Scenery of the Asiatic valleys — 
The " Valley of Sweet Waters" — Castles of Europe and Asia — Eu- 
ropa — Influence of the East on the West . . . 265 

CHAPTER XX. 

CONSTANTINOPLE. 

St. Sophia's — Interior of St. Sophia's — The Achmetie — Its court — Foun- 
tain — Inscriptions — The Yeric Djami — The Suliemanie — Its interior a 
Christian church — Ancient Mosaics — The Golden Horn — Cemetery 
and mosque of Eyoub — The European " Valley of Sweet Waters" — 
The Armenians— The "Mosque of Blood" . . .279 

CHAPTER XXI. 

ADVENTURE IN A HAREM. 

A French adventurer — Fortune made by conjuring — Conjuring ex- 
ploits — Visit to the house of a Turk — His mother — His wives — 
Beauty of Eastern women — The favorite — Circassian beauty — 
Failure of the Conjuror's incantations — A timely retreat . 291 

CHAPTER XXII. 

ANCIENT AND MODERN CONSTANTINOPLE. 

Defect of Constantinople as a residence — Its social character repulsive 
of western sympathies — Its religious and domestic institutes — ■ Its 
political character — Analogy between the Turkish empire and the 
Greek empire— Principles of government common to both — Character 
of the social state built up by Constantine — Its absence of simplicity 
— Of personal greatness— Of hereditary honors-Its dependence on 



CONTENTS. XI 

despotism and intrigue — Ancient remains at Constantinople — Tlie 
" Burned Pillar" — The Atmeidan — The obelisk of Theodosius — The 
monument of Constantine — The Delphic serpents — The ancient 
Hippodrome — The column of Marcian — Palace of Belisarius — Sub- 
terranean cisterns — The " Seven Towers" . . .301 

CHAPTER XXIII. 

THE WALLS OF CONSTANTINOPLE. 

Sight-seeing — The " dancing dervises" — Turkish bathing — Real objects 
of interest at Constantinople — The ancient walls — The Armenian 
cemetery— The walls of an ancient metropolis — Its visible history — 
The destinies of Constantinople determined by its site — Monumental 
philosophy . . . . . . .313 

CHAPTER XXIY. 

THE WALLS AND THEIR MEMORIES. 

The vision of Constantine — The foundation of the city— Its fortunes — 
Beleaguered by the Goths, A.D, 378 — By the Bulgarians, A.D. 559 — 
By the Persians and Avars, A. D. 626 — By the Arabs, A. D, 668, and 
A. D. 718— By the Russians, A. D. 865, A. D. 904, A.D. 941, A. D. 1043 
— Insulted by the Norman fleet, A. D. 1146 — Besieged and taken by 
the Crusaders, A. D. 1203— Second siege by the Latins, A. D. 1204— 
Surprised and captured by Alexius, A. D. 1261 — By John Cantacuzene, 
A. D, 1347— Final destruction of the Greek Empire, A. D. 1453— Its 
destruction in part occasioned by the schism of the East and West— = 
Neutrality of the Western Powers— Heroic resistance and death of 
Constantine Palseologus , . . • ,331 



PICTURESQUE SKETCHES 



GREECE AND TURKEY 



■«••♦» 



CHAPTER I. 

THE IONIAN ISLANDS. 

Sail down the Adriatic — Arrival at Corfu — Scenery of Corfu — Character 
and aspect of the Ionian Greeks — Town of Corfu — The palace of the 
Lord High Commissioner — A reception at the government-house — 
Prorogation of Parliament — University — Sunset at Corfu — Ancient 
remains — Temple of Neptune — Nereido Castro — Departure from 
Corfu — Paxos — Leucadia — Sappho's rock — Cephalonia — Zante — An 
English steamer, 

I CANNOT fulfil my promise, and give you an account of my 
Greek tour, without vividly recalling the pleasure which I ex- 
perienced on my first approach to the shores which I had mused 
on in so many a youthful dream. The delight of advancing 
rapidly into a delicious climate, dipping into warmer, purer, 
and more fragrant air, can seldom be forgotten by one who has 
ever known it. The weather in Italy, which we northerns re- 
gard as a paradise, "where never wind blows loudly,^' had been 
severe before I left it. At Bologna the cold had been so in- 
tense that, even cloaked to the chin, I could hardly make my 
2 



14 PICTURESQUE SKETCHES 

way from the hotel to the theatre; and at Ancona it was far 
from agreeable. You may imagine, therefore, the delight with 
which, feeling the change almost momently, I left the north 
and all its asperities behind me as we steered down the Adri- 
atic. Before the first evening, I had forgotten whether my 
cloak was on or off; and the second night, I lay on the deck till 
twelve o'clock without remembering that it was January and 
not June. The breeze, instead of passing over the snows of 
the Appenines, came to us warm from the ^gean, and mingled 
the softness of a southern clime with the wild and exhilarating- 
odors of the sea. The moon was full, and pierced the firma- 
ment with a light so keen and penetrating that, like the sculp- 
tors of old, who distinguished their statues of the virgin huntress 
by the far glance of the direct, well-opened eye, we remembered 
that Dian was no mere patroness of midnight dreamers, or 
moping lovers, but that she was sister of Apollo, and that her 
beams, like her brother's, were arrows from an immortal bow. 
Beneath her orb the plane of waters seemed to swell into a 
wide and plenary light to the remote horizon : every rock, how- 
ever distant, shone with silver radiance; and all around us — 
dark blue sea, and bright blue heaven — was as luminous as it 
was warm and joyous, except where the islands, of which we 
passed three or four successively, trailed dim shadows over the 
shoals, or flung a darker streak of purple beyond their rocky 
promontories. 

We arrived at Corfu within fifty hours after leaving Ancona. 
It was too late to allow of our disembarking : but on such an 
occasion the traveler enjoys his prolonged anticipation of a 
feast thus extended before him in the dubious light of the ima- 
gination. We thought on the morrow, and found it no hard- 
ship to remain on deck half the night, looking round and round 
upon a scene which by night or day is more beautiful than any 
western bay, gulf, or lake. When that morrow had arrived, a 



OF GREECE AND TURKEY. 15 

single excursion was sufficient to prove tbat my expectations 
liad not been pitched too high. The island of Corfu encircles 
the bay in which the town is situated, completely enclosing it 
on the north and south ; while to the east, the mountains of 
Epirus and Albania frame the picture, making the sea look like 
a great lake. From the margin of that sea, the mountains rise 
to a height of from 3000 to 4000 feet: immediately behind 
them stand the snowy ranges sung of by the G-reek poets of 
old. The latter are about 7000 feet in height: they have not, 
however, "taken the veil,^^ like the Swiss mountains, which 
live to themselves above the clouds, but smile from their blue 
region upon a beaming sea, looking down over the shoulder of 
the terrestrial mountains ranged before them with a glance at 
once familiar and divine, like that which the Homeric gods cast 
over the heads of demigods and heroes upon the affairs of mor- 
tals. In some places, a third chain of mountains rises behind 
the others, and the effect is indescribably grand at sunset, when 
the nearer ridge has put on its violet vest, while that above it 
is mantled in crimson, and along the highest, which then seems 
transparent, floats that rose-colored flame, the quintessential 
spirit of light. Within the island the hills are from 2000 to 
3000 feet high, and are in most places covered with groves of 
olives, whose "knarled and unwedgeable'^ trunks, dried up and 
wrinkled by the fervid handling of many a summer, seem as 
if they might have gained their worldly experience before 
Ulysses himself had cut his wise teeth, or told his first lie. 
The ground is never flat, except in a single instance; nor, on 
the other hand, does it swell into those soft and smooth undu- 
lations which delight the traveler whose foot tarries upon the 
green slopes of Clarens and Yevay, and displaces the fruit-tree 
blossoms with which they are reddened in spring. It is abrupt 
and broken, diversified with rocky shelves, terraces of vine, 
heathy knolls, and hollows filled with mint, thyme, and other 



16 PICTURESQUE SKETCHES 

aromatic herbs. Here and there the eye is caught by a thicket 
of myrtle, blossoming in the distance, or by some inland pro- 
montory, that dips into the dell, but shakes, before it reaches 
the shadow, a green and golden radiance from the orange grove 
that tufts its steeps. I give you the materials, and you may 
make up the picture with your best skill, and without fear of 
surpassing the reality: you may sprinkle the meadows with 
geraniums in full flower, and with thickets of rose ; and if nei- 
ther are the sort which our florists would most prize for their 
rareness, each grows with an abundance that paints the island 
wilderness with colors such as few gardens can boast. The 
beauty of Corfu is especially characterized by its union of wild- 
ness with richness. 

In the whole of the island, undivided as the sea that mirrors 
its bosky shores, I did not see a wall, or hedge which a child 
could not have squeezed itself through as easily as a lion of 
Eden could have pierced one of Eve's sweet-brier fences. The 
shores are indented by numberless long and strangely-shaped 
bays ; sometimes widening inwards into little lakes, sometimes 
shallowing into lagunes, and sometimes leaving bare a rock, 
over which the sea shatters itself in showers of white foam and 
driving mist — a pleasant vapor bath for the shrubs that bloom 
around. Here and there the water eddies round some little 
green island, with a few trees to define its low margin, and per- 
haps an old chapel in the centre, the whole space above the 
waves probably not exceeding half an acre. The air of this 
enchanting region is of a clearness which enables you to do full 
justice to the abundant beauty with which you are surrounded. 
You look through it as through a diamond, and fancy you pos- 
sess the eyes of an Olympian, not of a mortal. You stand on 
the top of an eminence, and feel yourself " in a large room," 
observing, even in the far distance, the gradations of colors, the 
shapes of individual objects, and the beauty of minute details, 



OF GREECE AND TURKEY. 17 

as if the whole lay close around you. The amplitude of the 
landscape imparts to it a characteristic nobleness; and the 
natural theatre in which you stand is^ when compared to that 
of our northern scenery, much as the temple of Bacchus^ in 
which 30,000 spectators witnessed at once a tragedy of So- 
phocles, when compared with Drury Lane or Covent Garden. 

Nothing can be more different in character than the land- 
scapes of the north and of the south. The character of the 
former is grave, subdued, and tender, abounding in passages of 
pathos and mystery, though glorified, not seldom, by a golden 
haze. That of the south, on the other hand, is at once majestic 
and joyous, ample in its dimensions, but not abounding in a 
complex variety of detail ; clearly defined, severe in structure, 
well brought out into the light ; but at the same time unspi- 
ritual in its scope, appealing less to the heart than to the fancy, 
expressing everything to the understanding, and, consequently, 
reserving little for a slowly apprehensive imagination. An 
analogous distinction may perhaps be traced in the character of 
the northern and southern races. In every country, indeed, 
there exists a certain analogy between the outward shapes of 
nature, and the mind it has nursed and helped to form. 

The woodlands of Corfu consist chiefly of the olive. Many 
travelers complain of the monotonous coloring of the southern 
olive-woods ; I think, however, that in this luminous region the 
effect would be too dazzling if the predominant color were not 
a sober one^ which, by its uniformity, as color, permits the eye 
to appreciate the exquisite gradations of light and shade. The 
brilliancy of the clouds also requires the contrast of something 
more grave to relieve the eye as it falls from them or glances 
aside from that most radiant of visual objects, an orange-grove. 
The orange-trees grow to about the size apple-trees reach with 
us ; and so dense is the mass of their dark and glittering leaves, 
that you would fancy the nightingale — nay, the nightingale's 

2* 



18 PICTURESQUE SKETCHES 

song—- could hardly force its way through their ambush. They 
flash of themselves in the sun, though unmoved hy a wind not 
often strong enough to disturb their phalanx. The upper 
leaves, being younger than the rest, are of a transparent golden 
green, and shine with a perpetual sunshine of their own ; and 
in the midst hang those great yellow and crimson globes, which 
Andrew Marvel sings of as ^^ orange lamps in a green night.^' 

I wish I could give as good an account of the Greeks as of 
their island abode. In outward bearing, at least, they are not 
unworthy of being its inhabitants. In few parts of the world 
is there to be found so comely a race. They possess almost 
always fine features, invariably fine heads, and flashing eyes } 
and their forms and gestures hav6 a noble grace about them 
which in less favored climes is seldom to be met with, even 
among the higher ranks. A Greek never stands in an un- 
graceful position ; indeed, his bearing often deserves to be called 
majestic : but his inward gifts seldom correspond, if the estimate 
commonly formed of him be not very incorrect, with his out- 
ward aspect. The root of the evil is now what it was in old 
times ; for the Ionian Greeks are a false people. Seldom, even 
by accident, do they say the thing that is ; and never are they 
ashamed of being detected in a lie. Such a character hardly 
contains the elements of moral amelioration. Experience is 
lost upon it. Those who are false to others are false to them- 
selves also ; what they see, will always be what they desire to 
see ; from whatever is repulsive they will turn their eyes away ; 
and neither time nor suffering can bring them a lesson which 
ingenuity and self-love are not able to evade. The Ionian 
Greeks are also greatly deficient in industry. They do not care 
to improve their condition ; their wants are few, and they will 
do little work beyond that of picking up the olives which fall 
from the tree. These the women carry home in baskets, almost 
all the labor falling on them, while the men idle away their 



OF GREECE AND TURKEY. 19 

everlasting, unhallowed holiday, telling stories, walking in 
procession, or showing as much diplomacy in some bargain 
about a capote as a Russian ambassador could display while 
settling the affairs of Europe with Lord Palmerston. Their - 
dress is eminently picturesque. On their heads they wear 
sometimes a sort of turban, sometimes a red cap ; round the 
waist they fasten a wide white zone ; and their trowsers, which 
do not descend below the knee, are so large that, fastened to- 
gether at the mid-leg, they have all the effects of flowing 
drapery, their color in general being crimson. 

The town of Corfu is a strange medley, in which a character 
now Greek and now Italian- is oddly diversified by French and 
English associations. The house of our lord high commis- 
sioner is called " the palace,'^ and deserves the name. It is of 
very considerable size, is built of Maltese stone, and abounds 
in stately apartments. Soldiers stand in waiting along the cor- 
ridors; and the landing-places and ante-rooms catch a" pictur- 
esque effect from the Albanian servants, who move about with 
a prompt, decisive grace, in their jeweled vests and tightly- 
fitting buskins. In front of the palace is the esplanade, thronged 
all day by the red coats and well-harnessed horses of English 
soldiers. In the evening it is comparatively quiet, and you may 
meet no one but a few Grreek priests, sometimes alone, some- 
times in pairs, pacing the long acacia avenues, with their black 
sacerdotal caps, black robe, dark eye — piercing at once and still 
— venerable beard, and hair that flows in waves down their 
backs. In the evening every one goes to the opera; nor are 
even the smaller islands without their theatre 

As the spring advanced^ my stay at Corfu became more and 
more agreeable. A kindlier warmth crept every day into the 
air, which lost nothing, however, of its sharp and clear fresh- 
ness, while it gained in sweetness. Every evening I enjoyed 
more and more my walk along the esplanade^ between rows of 



20 PICTURESQUE SKETCHES 

Persian lilacs, about the size of our birch-trees^ and in redun- 
dant bloom. Under them, at each side, were beds of geraniums, 
and all sorts of bot-bouse plants, wbicb extended tbeir ranks 
as if in a conservatory a quarter of a mile long ; and around 
them, as soon as evening fell, the fire-flies played with their 
trails of green light, pure as a diamond, till one would have 
fancied that the air had caught life at every pore, and darted 
about in sparks of electric fire. The night of the queen's birth- 
day a grand ball was given at the lord high commissioner's 
house. The place looked every inch a palace, the whole of it 
being thrown open, brilliantly lighted, and filled with the chief 
people of the island — not, I dare say, selected on any very ex- 
clusive principle. The scene was truly festal in aspect, and 
everywhere there was that air of enjoyment, the absence of 
which is perhaps the most striking characteristic of those great 
London parties at which the grave guests seem to be performing 
some penitential duty, remembering the sins of their youth, and 
fashionably repenting in purple and fine linen. While some 
were dancing, others walked up and down a magnificent gal- 
lery which runs along the top of the portico, the whole length 
of the building. Above us stretched an awning which pro- 
tected us from the dew; beneath us were countless flowers, 
which did not injure the air by breathing it before us; around 
us the flre-flies flashed, and from within the music of the band 
streamed through all the casements and floated far away over 
the town. It pursued me through the thickets and gardens in 
which I occasionally took refuge for the sake of enjoying cooler 
air, and looking back on the distant revelry through the bow- 
ers of lilacs and festoons of roses. From those gardens it was 
not easy to return to the palace; but their solitudes were made 
more delightful by the intrusion of the distant mirth. 

Another characteristic scene at which I ^^ assisted" was the 
prorogation of the parliament — a scene that illustrated well the 



OF GREECE AND TURKEY. 21 

meaning of our British " protection/' and the freedom of the 
Ionian republic. The parliament sits in the lord high com- 
missioner's palace ; and the members entered between files of 
soldiers^ who gave them a somewhat unceremonious greeting, 
so far as " privilege'^ is concerned, clashing their arms every 
moment, with emphatic loyalty, on the marble steps. As the 
president took his place, the band was playing " God save the 
Queen." The moment the lord high commissioner had 
finished his speech, a loud peal of artillery rang out from the 
citadel, and pronounced the " Amen'' in an audible voice j 
and the much-complimented and somewhat bewildered senators 
took their departure, amid the gleaming of swords, the glaring 
of uniforms, and the prancing of cavalry that charged up and 
down the esplanade. On the whole, the spectacle was both 
picturesque and significant, and would have met the cordial ap- 
probation of Queen Elizabeth, who marveled that the members 
of the " nether" house should sometimes be betrayed into med- 
dling with " matters of state." 

There is at Corfu a university — not using the word, how- 
ever, quite in the sense in which it is applied to Oxford or 
Cambridge. During a visit which I paid to it, I had some in- 
teresting conversation with a Greek professor, apparently a man 
of much learning. Among other things he discussed the sub- 
ject of Greek prosody, and made himself merry with what he 
called our preposterous mode of pronouncing. I referred to the 
poets, and asked how he could make harmony out of Homer's 
hexameters on his metrical principles. He, on the other hand, 
appealed to experience and to precedent, and affirmed that our 
prosodiacal system was merely an arbitrary and fanciful device 
of our own, which pleased us because we had invented it and 
were used to it. Having no demonstrative process at hand, I 
appealed, as prudent controversialists do on such occasions, to 
common sense, to the moral sense, and to every infallible in- 



22 PICTURESQUE SKETCHES 

tuition whicli occupies the space Ibetween these extremes : espe- 
cially I appealed to the ear. The little lively old man clapped 
both his hands to his head, and answered, " I too have ears/^ I 
looked at his head, and there were two ears, not at all too long, 
and in all respects as good-looking as another man's. The pro- 
fessor also stood on his native soil, discussed his native language, 
and was paid for knowing all about the matter. Accordingly, I 
made my submission. The only mode in which I can reconcile 
local traditions with the needs of our western ears is by supposing 
that the chant of the ancient minstrel, in reciting, swallowed up 
all discords, just as in our cathedral chant mere prose can be 
accommodated to music, whether the clause be long or short. 

The sunsets of Corfu as far exceed those of Venice as the 
latter surpass a London sunset seen on one of those foggy even- 
ings when that city, looked at from Hyde Park, might be de- 
scribed as a mist with trees and houses in it. One, in par- 
ticular, I shall never forget ; I rubbed my eyes, thinking I was 
in a dream, and mounted from rock to rock, trying to assure 
myself that it was a reality. The colors were wholly different 
in quality from any that I had ever seen in clouds, flowers, 
metals, feathers, or even jewels. The poet's expression, " an 
illumination of all gems," gives you but a faint idea of it. The 
effect, on the whole, was very dark. In a few minutes, the 
splendid pageant had spread itself over all the heavens, the 
west being but a little distinguishable from the east. A sud- 
den shade fell over the scene (the sky appearing to come nearer 
to the earth), at the same time that you seemed to look for 
leagues and leagues through the depth of colors, as glowing 
as if a world of dark and shining jewels had been melted 
into an atmosphere and suspended over our sphere. The 
woods and glens below, " invested with purpureal gleams," 
suggested to me, in their dewy darkness, the Elysian fields, and 
the shades where the heroic dead found rest amid their ama- 



or GREECE AND TURKEY. 23 

ranthine banks and meads of asphodel. Such colors could never 
have been represented in a picture. Even if the amethystine 
and vermilion hues could have been intelligibly rendered, 
nature only could have reconciled them to such shades of green 
and bronze. It was as if the sky had been a vast vault of 
painted glass — -nor perhaps will anything grander be seen till 
the millennium morn. These are the accidents which reveal to 
us at least what is possible, and may well be precious to us on that 
account alone. A region in which such effects were frequently 
realized should be peopled only by such forms as we see in 
Perugino's pictures, standing in their rapt beauty and eternal 
serenity against a sunset sky of pale green. 

I spare you the whole of my small learning on the subject of 
the ancient Corcyra. Where lay the Homeric Phseacia, and 
where the city of Alcinous stood, nobody knows ; and discus- 
sions on such subjects, when much prolonged, prove chiefly that 
the disputant has not caught much of the genus loci. Ulysses 
probably troubled himself little about the genealogy of Circe or 
Calypso ] and the modern traveler need not very closely in- 
vestigate questions about Ulysses, which, however they may be 
decided, leave the legend where it stands. The habitation of 
such things is the human fancy ] and whoever wants to know 
the exact spot where the hero was found by Nausicaa, had 
better put by his map, walk along the coasts, and fix on a spot 
where the meeting ought to have taken place. I found a dozen 
such. There are, alas ! few remains of antiquity in Corfu. 
Some traces still exist of a temple, probably dedicated to Nep- 
tune. ■ They are situated in a little green dell which hangs, 
amid olive-bowers, on the steeps beside the eastern sea. Some 
relics of ancient mythology also hold their ground in a modified 
form. Near the ancient Leucimna, is an eminence called 
" Nereido Castro,^^ a title derived from the circumstance that 
the spot is accounted a favorite resort of the Nereids, whose 



24 PICTURESQUE SKETCHES 

tutelary care is not yet quite forgotten, though no longer in- 
voked with libation and vows. 

Some persons are simple enough to imagine that the south 
is a land of perpetual sunshine. Such is not the case, even 
in Corfu, that fairest garden of the Adriatic. The morning 
of my departure was not very promising. During the pre- 
ceding day the heavy rain fell, as it were, in a mass on the 
earth. The next morning the sky was still louring, and the 
sea, during the preceding month a deep blue, had changed into 
a turbid and gloomy green. The Albanian mountains frowned 
behind their clouds, and the loftier of them were of a threat- 
ening purple, bordering on black, with the exception of their 
white summits, and the long rifts down their sides in which 
the snow still lurked. The sky, however, had become as bright 
as usual before we had dropped anchor in the bay of Paxos. We 
had not time to land. The little luxuriant island looked like a 
smaller Corfu, but without its mountains. Its olive-woods 
sloped down the hills in all directions to the water's edge, and 
stood 

" With their green faces fixed upon the flood." 

A few windmills clustered together on a mound near the sea; 
and their circling sails harmonized with that general air of in- 
dustry and life which contrasted with the elysian stillness of 
Corfu's lawns and bays, where the natives think it exertion 
enough to walk in the sun, and their English protectors won- 
der that neither new roads nor schools can inspire them with a 
little Dutch industry or American energy. 

We reached the harbor of Santa Maura, the ancient Leuca- 
dia, at about four o'clock in the evening. Landing at the fort, 
and proceeding thence, by a long causeway and a ferry, to the 
town, we wandered on into the island till it was late and dark. 
Our path lay principally through woods of olive; and after some 



OP GREECE AND TURKEY. 25 

time the moon silvered the distant mountain-tops wherever 
they were visible through the gaps in the forest, and rained its 
white light through the twinkling foliage of the trees close by 
us, and through the rifts in their aged stems. At night we 
embarked again ; and I was left almost alone on deck, to watch 
one of the most beautiful and pathetic of spectacles — a moon- 
setting at sea. It sank with a staid pomp and magnificence 
analogous to that of sunset, but far more melancholy in effect. 
The declining orb became a dark orange-color as it approached 
the water. The clouds hung depressed around it in heavy 
masses, wanly tinged, not irradiated by its light ; and the sea, 
dark everywhere else, burned beneath it with a gloomy fire. 
The moon had all but disappeared, when the man at the helm 
called out to me, " That's Sappho's leap." I turned, and its 
last beam still played on a white rock, the extremity of the 
Leucadian promontory. That rock will be an object of interest 
while the world lasts, associated as it is witlj the memory of 
the most celebrated woman who has ever lived; celebrated by 
a love song and a love. How far her celebrity was deserved 
we shall never know ; but traveling as we do, through time as 
through space, amid a world half visionary and half historical, 
we shall do best to regard such records as I did the material 
monument, not with a near or captious scrutiny, but at a dis- 
tance, and by moonlight. 

Before eight the next morning we had leaped on the shores 
of Cephalonia. Its bay is long and narrow, not lustrous like 
that of Corfu, but clouded with the shadows of steep mount- 
ains, which slant to the dim water in masses of barren rock, 
with scarcely a tree or a blade of grass to diversify them, from 
the gray ridges above to the caverns below. One of these 
caverns is a remarkable object, and a great scandal to the phi- 
losophers. It is situated about twenty feet from the margin of 
the sea, the water of which winds in a stream nearly parallel 
3 



26 . PICTURESQUE SKETCHES 

to the sliore for aTbout as many yards, descending in its course 
witli a current so strong as to turn a mill close by. Reaching 
the cavern, it disappears ; and what becomes of it none can dis- 
cover. Whether it flows along under the bed of the sea, or 
loses itself among the roots of the mountains, is a mystery not 
to be solved by the island philosophers. The spot is eminently 
picturesque, surrounded as it is by rocks fringed with aloes, 
which protrude their long pointed leaves far before them, and 
cast immovable shadows upon the sea-walls among the shelves 
and ledges. Some of these aloes spired up in thick flower- 
stems at least twenty feet high, none of which, however, bore 
flowers. We walked for hours along the sides of the mount- 
ains, which, though generally bare, sink here and there into 
shallow coves and flat spaces near the sea, clothed with a vivid 
green, and occasionally sprinkled with gardens. A particularly 
beautiful effect was produced by the almond-trees, whose pen- 
dulous masses of snow-white blossoms swayed about in the 
lightest breeze. The companion of my walk, a Dane, was a 
man remarkable both for learning and ability. He lectures on 
history at the military school of Athens — a position for which 
he is qualified by an extent of erudition not common even in 
Gevm^mj, the country where he was in part educated. He 
astonished some English ofiicers, who had been for years quar- 
tered in those regions, by a knowledge very superior to that 
which they had acquired, not only respecting the history and 
antiquities of each island, but also as to its statistics and pre- 
sent state. It was amusing to see the little square-built, close- 
knit man, with his dry ardor, modest confidence, and con- 
scientious accuracy, interposing to correct any error into which 
they might fall while discussing such subjects. He lectures in 
maiern Greek, reading the ancient also like his native tongue, 
as well as most of the European languages. He prophesies 
that what he calls the fifth great attack on the liberty and civili- 



OF GREECE AND TURKEY. 27. 

fation of Europe will one day be made by the Russians; but 
lie thinks that it will be frustrated, and end in the breaking up 
of that great empire. 

At Zante I was only able to pass a single night. A glance 
is enough to prove that it deserves its Italian title ^^ Fior di 
Levante." It consists mainly of a vast and rich plain, culti- 
vated with currants, and abruptly terminated by a picturesque 
mountain-ridge. The Ionian Islands are worthy of their fame, 
and our love, if beauty constitutes worth. They were success- 
ively the resting-places of Themistocles, Aristotle, Alexander, 
Augustus, and G-ermanicus. Antony and Cleopatra also sailed 
by them in their golden galleys before the battle of Actium. 
Their political history is full of interest. The contests of 
Corcyra with Corinth, the parent city of that colony, were long 
and memorable, and on a smaller scale, exhibited perhaps as 
much heroism as was displayed in the American war of inde- 
pendence, with not a little of the same motives on both sides. 
And yet Corfu will always be remembered, chiefly in associ- 
ation with the Homeric legend of Ulysses; nor shall I be the 
last traveler to wander along its sylvan shores, from creek to 
creek, in search of the exact spot where Nausicaa, modest and 
bold, first lifted up her eyes, full of wonder and pity, on the 
shipwrecked man whom she led to her father's palace. 

From Zante I sailed for Patras in an English steamer, and 
have seldom been more amused than by the contrast between 
English manners and those of the islanders among whom I had 
been lately sojourning. The unceremonious vivacity of the 
G-reeks makes even a lively Frenchman look dull by comparison. 
Judge then of my astonishment when I found myself in the 
midst of Englishmen, and of Englishmen recently come from 
home. I could never sufficiently admire their sublime tran- 
quillity, or rather, that wonderful vis inertise, which seemed 
sufficient of itself to keep the ship steady in a storm, and 



28 PICTURESQUE SKETCHES 

■wtich would, no doubt, have made even sea-sickness a dignified 
condition. I gazed almost with awe at their smooth-brushed 
hats, which the Egean breezes hardly dared to ruffle — their 
unblemished coats, and immaculate boots, on which several of 
them gazed more attentively than they would have done at the 
Leucadian rock. Happen what might, their magnanimous in- 
difference to all chances and changes not connected with busi- 
ness or duty, preserved them from ^^all astonishment.^^ Had 
a whale risen close beside us and spouted its foam in their 
faces, they would, I believe, have contented themselves with 
observing that ^^it was not in good taste. ^' To one of them I 
spoke by way of experiment, of Sappho's leap and the Leu- 
cadian rock; "Yes," he replied, "I have heard that it was the 
scene of a distressing accident." I must say, however, in 
justice to my new acquaintances, that they appeared thorough 
gentlemen. In antiquities, they were far indeed from being 
versed ; but in the principles, ancient but ever young, of pa* 
triotic duty and honor they hadj probably^ little to kam. 



OF GREECE AND TURKEY. 29 



CHAPTER II. 

FROM PATRAS TO ATHENS. 

Missolonghi — Patras — An Albanian guide — Antiquities — Scenery be- 
tween Patras and Vostizza — Lepanto — Territory of the Achaian 
League — English and Greek mountains — Site of Sicyon— Ancient 
remains — Robbers — Character of our Albanian guide — Coriath — ■ 
The Acropolis of Corinth — Ruins of temples — The Fountain of 
Peirene — Callimachi — Arrival before Athens. 

Strange memories; and sometliing more tlian memories, 
seemed to stir within me, as, leaving the islands behind, we 
drew near to the ancient Hellas, and saw the white mountains 
of the Morea, at one side, shining above a long line of mist, 
and right before lis, those that border the "immortal waves 
that saw Lepp^nto's fight.'' The first record, however, which 
met the eye was not an ancient one. As we glided past Misso- 
longhi we thought- — who would not?— of Byron. Nowhere 
else does one feel so much in charity with him. His fate will 
long impart an interest to a place which would otherwise not 
possess much to attract notice. Missolonghi is a long, strag- 
gling, white village, surrounded by marshes, and backed with 
fine mountains. Passing it by, we reached Patras. The town 
is picturesquely situated at the base of a high mountain, during 
a large part of the year covered with snow, and is surrounded 
in every direction by lofty hills. Two vast headlands of bare 
rock — -blocks apparently about 2000 feet high — slope opposite 
to it down into the bay, which is completely locked in by the 
Ionian Islands. The situation of Patras is beautiful, even to 

3* 



80 PICTURESQUE SKETCHES 

those who have seen Corfu. The town, which is a tolerably 
thriving one, contains several wide streets, most of the houses 
being new, and many of them well-built. I amused myself 
walking up and down the principal street, looking at the Grreek 
and Albanian boys, who sat at work in their booths at each 
side, with legs crossed in the Turkish fashion. As the stranger 
passed, they lifted their quick black eyes, in rapid inquest, 
from their occupation, which generally consisted in the embroid- 
ery of colored slippers and all sorts of gay apparel. Those boys 
were characterized not only by extraordinary delicacy of feature, 
but by a girlish expression of. grace, alertness, and vivacity. 

I had intended to have taken a boat for Corinth, but the 
wind proved unfavorable. As I stood in doubt^ a young 
Albanian, clad in the close-fitting vest, white skirt, and scarlet 
shoes of his country, stepped up to me with a gay and graceful 
familiarity, and without actually tapping me on the shoulder, 
accosted me, after a brief but decorous salutation, as if we had 
been acquaintances all our lives. An English gentleman, he 
informed me, was in the same diJBficulty as myself, and had just 
decided on taking horses and riding to Corinth. He was himself 
engaged as a courier and traveling servant (to the extraordinary 
good fortune, as he assured me, of his master), and I could not 
do better than join the party. The splendid attire and marvel- 
ous beauty of the man, who combined the features of his 
country's sculptured divinities with the wild grace of a young 
panther, might have dazzled me into obedience, had I hesitated. 
I was, however, well pleased with the proposal, and still more 
so after I had made acquaintance with the traveling companion 
I had so opportunely met. After forming our plans and order- 
ing our horses, I found that I had still a few hours to devote to 
Patras, and availed myself of it by taking a solitary walk into 
the country. 

Just beyond the modern town, and higher up the hill, ex- 



OP GREECE AND TURKEY. 31 

tends the old -village — for one can hardly call it by a more dig- 
nified title- — which formerly bore the name of Patras. It con- 
sists chiefly of mud hovels, each connected with its little garden- 
plot, but all as confusedly mingled and as ill combined as if the 
village had just been shaken out of a bag. Higher still, there 
stands a venerable old castle of the middle ages, the strong 
walls of which sustained many a siege during the war of inde- 
pendence, but always repulsed the assailant. It is of a vast 
size, and in its base some blocks that belonged to the ancient 
Acropolis are to be observed. Within a niche in one of its 
walls I remarked a statue which had suffered from the guns of 
the besiegers ; but the fortress is still tolerably perfect, and 
derives an interest from its situation as well as from its for- 
tunes. Not far off is an object as venerable as the castle itself, 
and perhaps as old — a plane-tree of enormous dimensions, 
probably not less than thirty feet in circumference. It towers 
aloft in solitary grandeur, without a compeer or a companion, 
except a few almond-trees, the very impersonation of vegetable 
youth and flexile grace. About a quarter of a mile higher up 
the mountain-side are some picturesque arches mantled in ivy, 
the remains of a Roman aqueduct. Near the sea, there are 
also vestiges of an ancient temple, the only one not obliterated 
of all which Patras boasted of old. 

The associations of Patras are of a composite character, com- 
bining Grreek and Roman records. I do not know that this 
circumstance adds to its interest : on the contrary, I have ge- 
nerally found that such cross influences neutralize each other, 
and that the imagination is most deeply affected by an impres- 
sion which, however slight, is homogeneous. In one respect 
Patras resembled Rome itself; it was a great receiver of stolen 
goods. When Augustus, for the purpose of making Patras a 
great commercial centre, colonized it afresh, he brought thither, 
as a matter of course, not only large numbers of men from the 



82 PICTURESQUE SKETCHES 

various cities of Greece, but with them those associates, without 
whom a Greek never felt at his ease or in good company — I 
mean the statues of the gods and the heroes. Patras thus be- 
came one of the most splendid cities of Greece ; but it has re- 
tained little of its ill-gotten prey. Its temples and its statues 
have vanished ; how — we can but guess. I am often tempted 
to wish that all Greece, when its long and bright day was 
over, had met the fate of Pompeii ; and that, as a whole country 
cannot be preserved inviolate under a glass case, a friendly 
shower of ashes had afforded the required protection. Such a 
wish includes, of course, the condition that . the covering of 
ashes had been destined to melt away in our own time like a 
veil of winter snow. What a radiant apparition of temples and 
statues would in that case emerge from the darkness, and aston- 
ish our modern eyes ! . 

In the afternoon of the next day, we started on our expedi- 
tion, and a singular cavalcade we made, our horses being among 
the most degenerate descendants of the " tempest-fresh-footed 
steeds," celebrated in Pindaric song, while those which served 
to carry our luggage were shabbier still. Behind us trudged 
a noisy rout— our guides and the proprietors of our horses. The 
way from Patras to Corinth (road there is none) delighted me 
by its beauty and its wildness. Our path generally followed 
the windings of the coast. At the opposite side of the gulf 
rose vast mountain ranges, the summits of which were veiled 
behind clouds so smooth and motionless as to look almost solid. 
I could easily imagine the old Greeks fancying their snowy 
tabernacles to be the habitation of gods. On our right hand, 
the mountains of the Morea stretched far away ; but their peaks 
were generally hidden by the interposition of their own lower 
ranges, which, in the earlier part of our pilgrimage, slanted up 
green to a considerable height, but, as we advanced, ascended 
in gray walls and bastions, and sometimes in more fantastic 



OF GREECE AND TURKEY. 33 

sbapes. Often there was hardly room for our narrow and zig- 
zag path between the mountain bases and the sea. The ledges 
were plumed from steep to steep by a sort of gray pine, almost 
as flat-headed as a thorn, and not much larger ; the interspaces 
between which were filled up by the dwarf cypress. We passed, 
as we rode on, occasional gaps in these mountain walls, perhaps 
a quarter of a mile wide ; and looking far inland beheld, in- 
stead of ivied rocks, and great black caverns with the sea roar- 
ing at their portals, a quieter scene — lonely glens discerned 
through narrowing vistas, and beyond them mountains rising 
range above range, their blue and their purple deepening 
through the various gradations of aerial distance, and the re- 
moter of them shining, strongly yet placidly, with unyielding 
snow. For the most part, however, the interval between the 
sea and the mountains could not have been less than two or 
three miles, the intervening space being covered with a vegeta- 
tion more beautiful than any tree could afford, consisting of 
arbutus, dwarf holly, laurestinus, thyme, and oleander, all min- 
gled and massed together in thickets, or rather in jungles. For 
leagues, as we traversed the wild, there was neither human be- 
ing nor house in view; but the scene was not therefore dreary. 
All around us we heard the bleating of the lambs ; and now 
and then we stopped to admire a tall white goat (ragged as 
those tended by Pan himself), rearing up, supported on his 
hind legs, with his head buried in an ivy-bush, or vainly en- 
deavoring to extricate his venerable beard from the hollies. 

We stopped for the night at a cottage which served as a sort 
of inn or halfway-house. It was not much inferior in appear- 
ance to the resting-places you meet in the more retired parts of 
England; but certainly it was less amply stored with creature 
comforts. Our bed-room was a loft over the stable. Fortunately 
it possessed a fire-place, otherwise we should have suffered much 
from cold, as even Grreece can be cold in February- — and the 



34 PICTURESQUE SKETCHES 

moonliglit shone clearly througli the rafters of the roof. Beds 
there were none ; and I doubt whether there is one to be found 
in the once luxurious Corinth. My capote, however — a goat- 
skin cloak with a spreading hood — kept me warm; indeed, 
even in the open air, the thick unpliant texture of a capote 
protects one like the walls of a house, and serves at once for 
raiment and habitation. It was late before I could persuade 
myself to retire to rest. The night was beautiful ; and the lit- 
tle bay beside which we had taken up our abode, with its sands 
bright as silver and its ripples flashing above them; its bowers 
of oleander bending over the margin of the sea ; its sea swell- 
ing up with dark-glazed azure against the moonlight ; the snow- 
capped mountains at the other side, and at their base the town 
of Lepanto — altogether formed a scene which it was difficult to 
quit. Nor was it the beauty of that scene only which prolonged 
my vigil far into the night. I do not in general feel much en- 
thusiasm about battle-fields : but it would have been difficult to 
have gazed upon those waves of Lepanto without some recol- 
lection of the spectacle they witnessed when the banners in- 
scribed with the Cross triumphed over the Crescent, and the 
Turkish ships, to the number of nearly two hundred, were sunk, 
burned, or captured by the Spanish, G-enoese, and Papal fleets, 
under the command of John of Austria and John Andrew Doria. 
I retired at last to rest, just as the last embers of our fire were 
burning out; stretched myself on the floor, and with my carpet- 
bag as a pillow, slept soundly till morning. 

The next day we rose early, and about six o'clock break- 
fasted— -somewhat better than we should have done if we had 
not had the forethought to lay up a store of provision at Patras. 
We resumed our march and advanced, not very rapidly, encum- 
bered as we were with our luggage-mules, along that coast line 
which in old times constituted the territory of the Achaian 
league. The Achaian race, though during the palmy period of 



OF GREECE AND TURKEY. 35 

the Hellenic States it acquired but little celelbrity, was assuredly 
one of the greatest of ancient Greece. It owed that greatness 
in the first instance to the quiet energy and wise abstinence 
with whichj declining interference in most of the struggles 
between the rival Greek powers, it developed the large resources 
of its geographical situation, and matured its social system; 
and in the second place to the fact that it did not put forth its 
political strength till the other Hellenic races were in their 
decline. A fruit-tree placed in an ice-house can be made to 
keep its vegetative energies as it were in abeyance, and conse- 
quently to burst into blossom at an unusual period, when sub- 
mitted to the privileges of light and air. Such seems to have 
been the political fortune of Achaia. While Athens and Sparta 
contended, it slept like a dormouse; and when their day was 
past, its sun rose. Few political revivals have taken place 
more remarkable than that of Achaia, when. the cities that had 
for so many years constituted the Achaian league sprang forth 
once more, banded against the tyranny which had so long op- 
pressed them, and drove out the Macedonian garrisons. Un- 
fortunately they did not trust wholly to themselves. In their 
career of victory they associated themselves with the Komans 
as allies, and fared, of course, as the Britons fared after they 
had accepted the aid of the Saxons. Our allies should be our 
inferiors — an ally of equal or superior power being apt to turn 
out the most dangerous of enemies. The Romans came as 
friends, and remained as masters : the name of Achaia was 
extended over Greece, and Achaia became but a name. Not 
few, however, and not unimportant are the lessons it has be- 
queathed. 

We rode on all day, the sea at our left hand, and on our 
right that noble chain of mountains, not less than 7,000 feet 
in height, including among them the far-famed Erymanthus 
and "Cyllene hnnr,'^ which separated of old the enterprising 



36 PICTURESQUE SKETCHES 

and maritime Achaia from the recluse and unchanging Arcadia. 
Towards sunset we arrived at Vostizza^ where we remained for 
the night. We passed the evening exploring the orange and 
lemon groves which decorate and sweeten its neighborhood. 
Like Patras, Vostizza is an improving place, but it includes 
some signs of prosperity which It might perhaps dispense with, 
such as public places of a very humble sort devoted to billiards 
and cards. An inn or a bed was, however, out of the question. 
Vostizza stands on the site of the ancient ^gium, the place of 
assembly, after the destruction of Helice, of the cities belonging 
to the Achaian league. Near the temple of the Panachasan 
Ceres was the sacred grove of Jupiter, in which, year after year, 
the deputies met. No remains now exist either of the temple 
or of the city. The next day we continued our journey, with 
the glorious range of Parnassus right opposite us at the other 
side of the gulf. Gazing at its luminous crest I could not 
help thinking, as I called to mind Wordsworth's lines, 

" What was the great Parnassus' self to thee, 
Mount Skiddaw?" 

that the venerable bard had in this instance exhibited more of 
patriotic sentiment than of that profound appreciation of nature 
which characterizes his poetry more than any other existing. 
Many Skiddaws would not make one Parnassus in bulk; and 
in perfection of outline and beauty of position there can still 
less be a comparison between them. The English mountains 
are indeed worthy of all love and honor ; they may boast even 
a characteristic beauty of their own, different in kind from that 
of the Alps, the Apennines, and the G-reek Highlands : their 
sylvan slopes and pastoral valleys ranged over by pacific herds, 
and thick-set with orchards, gardens, and happy homesteads, 
touch the heart with a deep moral pathos; and the small scale 
of the scenery often gives a peculiar beauty of detail to the 



OP GREECE AND TURKEY. 37 

woody and indented coast against wlaicK the ripple of tlie lake 
bursts, breaking its bubble upon brier and bramble ; but so far 
as sublimity or the severer order of beauty is concerned^ they 
can enter into no comparison with the mountains of the south. 
The diiference between mountain ranges one-half of which 
remains above the line of perpetual snow and the bases of 
which are blackened with pine-forests, and mountains which 
are turf to the summit, is simply the difference between poetry 
and poetical prose. After gazing on the vast precipices of the 
Alps, after watching their aspiring peaks, and long barrier 
(ridge or spine), of crag and ice, staying the tempest and divid- 
ing north from south, the comparatively shapeless bulk of not 
a few among our English and Scotch mountains, with their 
soft, spongy surface, and vacillating, compromising outline, 
seems absolutely carnal in character. They are of the earth, 
earthy. However, there are so many different sorts of mount- 
ain beauty, as well as of beauty in the vales and plains, that 
no rivalry need be feared if none be provoked. 

Towards evening one of our guides pointed to a circular flat- 
headed hill which stood at our right hand, about two miles off, 
a little in advance of the mountain chain : on its summit, as he 
explained to us through the interpreter, there stands a small 
village occupying the site of an ancient city. That hill 
was the Acropolis of the ancient Sicyon, one of the most im- 
portant cities of the Achaian league. A theatre, of which the 
seats were carved in a rock, and a stadium, also hollowed out 
of the hill-side, still remain ; but these are all the traces which 
exist of a city once so celebrated for its temples and its count- 
less statues, a city which boasted one of the most celebrated 
schools of Grrecian art. These slight remains of Sicyon are the 
only memorials now existing of the twelve great cities which 
lined the southern coast of the gulf, and constituted the 
Achaian confederation — a confederation wliich, as well as the 
4 



38 PICTURESQUE SKETCHES 

Ionian league that preceded it in the same region, exhibited on 
a smaller scale that type after which the whole social organi- 
zation of Greece was formed. 

We procured accommodation for the night in a little village 
of which I have forgotten the name. What was the exact 
nature of that accommodation, I need not specify in detail, for, 
of all forms which egotism can assume, the most offensive is 
surely that of a traveler who solemnizes the apotheosis of din- 
ners and breakfasts, and commends mine host's overcharge to 
eternal fame. We ate, I dare say, a bad dinner ; but as the 
peasants of Greece, who are contented with a handful of olives 
and a crust of bread, certainly could not have pitied us, it is to 
be hoped that we took the hint, and spent no immoderate degree 
of compassion on ourselves. More than once, on moor and 
mountain and in forest depths, I have had to endure no incon- 
siderable degree of hunger, but I have never found myself much 
the worse for it; and assuredly one of the benefits we should 
derive from traveling is an emancipation from the bondage of 
comforts — a term under which we commonly include multitudes 
of things which in old time would have been luxuries unat- 
tainable by kings. The splendors and pageantries of wealth, 
the velvet hangings, and palatial homes of regal state make, I 
am convinced, a less dangerous, because a less insidious, appeal 
to the sensual and vain-glorious instincts of men, than one-half 
of those things which we speak of as ^^ mere necessaries" abso- 
lutely essential to comfort and respectability 

From an undue devotion to creature comforts, at least, the light- 
hearted people among whom we sojourned were exempt : under 
our windows they kept up all sorts of games during the even- 
ing • among other things, firing at a target, and playing cards. 
The latter, I admit, is not by any means a respectable occu- 
pation, especially for a peasantry — who ought never to ape the 
vices of their betters ; and if you should be disposed to infer 



OF GREECE AND TURKEY. 39 

that where industrialism is deficient, reckless habits are likely 
to be in excess, and that a very light-hearted people may find 
it a little difficult to keep their feet steadily in the path of 
duty, I am not prepared to deny the assertion. The Grreeks, 
like the other southern races, may require to ^^ carry weight" 
when they ride the race of life ; but if they can only manage 
to borrow that salutary load from a sense of duty rather than 
from indigestion, and a dyspeptic hatred of mirth, so much the 
better for them, and for those who associate with them. I 
have seen enough of them to know that the planet Mercury 
has still some magnetic influence on the tides within their 
veins. May that sacred influence make their songs and their 
mirth to abound ; and may some other stellar influence, not 
less sacred, in conjunction with it, cause them to keep their 
hands from illicit familiarity with my luggage. The regions 
through which we had been traveling abounded with robbers. 
During the preceding day, in a narrow pass beside the sea, we 
came upon some armed men who looked of very dubious cha- 
racter, and who apparently thought no better of us, for they 
eyed us rather sharply. My friend's Albanian servant, the 
commander of our party, drew to one side a tall and handsome 
fellow who seemed to be the leader of the band, and held him 
in conversation for a few minutes as we rode by. On his re- 
joining us, I asked him what he had been saying to his com- 
panion. ^' Only giving him a little money to buy powder," 
was his reply. ^^Who is he?" I rejoined. "A robber," 
answered our trusty guide ; " I have known him many years." 
On my expressing some solicitude on the subject of our port- 
manteaus, he begged of me to be at rest, for that everything was 
'-^ quite right." " No danger with me," he exclaimed, slap- 
ping his embroidered vest ; ^^all men my friends safe — tou- 
jours — no danger — -niente — I an army — I a fleet !" On my 
persisting in inquiries which he plainly considered indelicate^ 



40 PICTURESQUE SKETCHES 

he sprang from the groundj to the great peril of his red leather 
slippers (contriving, however, whether he leaped or walked, to 
pick his steps, and avoid all except the flat stones), and ex- 
claimed : " How much franks, how much danari have you in 
your sac-de-nuit V "About £50,'^ I replied. Upon which he 
informed me that the clothes in his trunk were worth at least 
£100, and asked whether I seriously believed that he would 
expose his valuable property to any danger of pillage. His 
statement rather surprised me at the time ; but afterwards it 
struck me as very likely to be true, for whatever money he 
made he immediately invested in some new chain or piece- of 
gold lace. 

The next day at about three in the afternoon, we had arrived, 
as I fancied, within half an hour's ride of Corinth; for the sun, 
shining full upon it, though hidden from our eyes by a cloud, 
and reflected back upon us through the pure atmosphere of 
Grreece, brought out every feature of the town with such dis- 
criminating touches, that distance was practically abolished. 
On, however, we traveled, hour after hour, and still we had not 
reached our place of destination. Our way was lengthened by 
the interposition of several rivers flowing from their mountain 
glens into the sea, the fords of which were not always easily 
passed ; and of course in no case was anything like a bridge to 
be found. On one occasion, after forcing our way for a con- 
siderable distance through the oleander thickets which almost 
choked up the wide gravelly space which the winter floods had 
added to the river's bed, we came to a stream winding rapidly 
seaward, the depth of which sorely perplexed us. One of our 
guides, bolder than the rest, pushed his mule into the water at 
the shallowest place he could find. The animal, as I soon per- 
ceived, carried the precious portmanteau of our Albanian guide. 
The quick eye of Elias had made the discovery sooner still, and 
he called on the man to stop. His appeal not being at once 



OP GREECE AND TURKEY. 41 

attended to, he pulled out a pistol, and pointed it at the recu- 
sant, who lost as little time as possible in returning, " What 
would you have done,'' I said, "if he had gone on?" "I shoot 
him dead,'' was the reply; "he float down to the sea, and no 
one know; what harm?" I think he would have kept his 
word. Nothing, however, could be more obliging and good- 
humored than his general demeanor; he never was tired of 
singing songs, and telling us stories of his adventures in vari- 
ous parts of the East, for he had been a great traveler. We 
were perpetually amused by the vivacity with which he re- 
marked on everything that occurred, and the shamelessness 
with which he praised himself for his sense, spirit and address, 
whether shown in defeating a plot or in telling a lie. What- 
ever he might do, he was alike proud of the achievement ; and 
sometimes put me in mind of the Homeric heroes, who, if they 
had no victory to glory in, boasted that "their swift feet had 
delivered them from black death and hateful Orcus." Never 
have I seen a fellow of a nobler presence. He might have 
supplied a sculptor with a model for an Apollo : his hands were 
as finely made as a woman's, his features were perfectly sym- 
metrical, his black piercing eye had that roundness which, in 
the ancient fresco of the head of Achilles, so marvelously 
unites the expression of human intellect with the audacious 
passion of the animal, and his step seemed to spurn the earth 
it trod on. His language was a strange jargon of all tongues. 
Why we did not speak modern Greek he could not understand. 
Wherever he went, as he assured us, at the end of a week, he 
spoke the language "faster than the natives." That he spoke 
it well enough to be understood I do not doubt, for he was 
always ready to try at anything; and as my friend and I con- 
versed, I observed that his quick eye glanced from us at the 
objects we regarded, suggesting to him, no doubt, the names of 
those objects. . 

4* 



42 PICTURESQUE SKETCHES 

During the wliole of our day's ride, we had hardly met a, 
house or human being ; at sunset, however, passing through an 
olive wood, we came upon a party of peasants. The red beams 
of the sinking luminary shone through the old stems and 
twisted branches upon their gay attire, and broke on the shal- 
low pools, left behind -by the winter rains, in which their forms 
were reflected. As we rode by, I could not but remark a cer- 
tain air of disquiet and trouble which characterized the party. 
One woman stood a little apart from the rest, gazing intently 
into a wooden vessel which she held in her hands; the others 
conversed eagerly. The curiosity of our Albanian Elias (the 
second syllable of his name is pronounced short) was at once 
excited, and he rode up to her. On rejoining our party, he told 
us that a man in the neighborhood was ill, and that his wife 
with some friends were consulting auguries in order to ascer- 
tain whether he would live or die. As far as I could under- 
stand the process of inquiry, they had broken a raw egg into a 
vessel of water, and the fate of the sick man depended on the 
mode in which the yolk floated or sank. Elias would commit 
himself to no opinion on the subject. Old observances he held 
in much reverence; but he indemnified himself by professing 
marvelously liberal opinions on moral questions. Persons who 
had seen as much of the world as he had, were free from all 
prejudice, as he assured us, and full of all wisdom. He was 
fond of appealing to the old philosophers of Greece, of whom 
he knew nothing but the names, and affirmed that they were 
infallible authorities on all subjects, and thought exactly as he 
did. Imagine a Harlequin-Socrates, or an Autolycus-Phocion I 
Perhaps, after all, that only means— imagine Alcibiades. 

About six o'clock in the evening we reached Corinth. The 
modern town (village it should rather be called) is situated in 
the midst of ruins, most of them ruins made such by the late 
war. Among them rise a few Roman walls; but of all the 



OF GREECE AND TURKEY. 43 

magnificent buildings that once adorned the wealthiest of the 
Grecian cities, the only memorial is a single temple — to what 
divinity dedicated no one knows — which crowns a gentle emi- 
nence. Five fluted columns alone remain standing; and around 
them lie fragments of the frieze and cornice, so vast in size 
that one can hardly guess either how they were lifted to their 
station, or how, once lifted, they were ever thrown down. Co- 
rinth was the Tyre of Greece. Situated between the Corinthian 
and Saronic gulfs, connected thus with the eastern and western 
seas, and the resting-place of all who passed from the mainland 
of Greece to the Peloponnesus, and vice versa, Corinth rapidly 
became wealthy and dissolute. It was early eminent for its 
arts also, especially for those that minister to luxury : in it, the 
nobler arts, however, likewise flourished. When the Koman 
consul Mummius had taken Corinth by assault, he desired to 
adorn his triirmph with its spoils; and accordingly issued a 
proclamation commanding his soldiers to spare the works of 
art, and enforcing his edict with the threat that ^^ if any soldier 
broke a statue, he should make another himself !'' The anec- 
dote illustrates the comparative appreciation of art among the 
Greeks, and among that people who conquered the world — in 
part, perhaps, because they were too stupid to do any better. 
Its situation would have rendered Corinth, I cannot but think, 
the most suitable position for the capital of the modern kingdom. 
Had the metropolis been placed there, one good effect would at 
least have followed. The antiquities of Athens would have been 
left in their sacred seclusion, or might have become the orna- 
ments of a grave university city, unvulgarized by the associa- 
tions of a metropolis. Had such an arrangement been adopted, 
Corinth could hardly have failed to be the seat of a considerable 
trade before this time. In that case also, steamers would long 
since have plied between Patras and Corinth. In one of them 
I should probably have embarked, for few people are wise 



44 ' PICTURESQUE SKETCHES 

enougli to use, without abusing, the modern facilities for tra- 
veling. I should then have lost a delightful ride of four days 
— and you would have escaped my tedious narrative. 

Just above the city of Corinth (so let us call it, in deference 
to its ancient fame) rises its far-famed Acropolis, the most 
stately, majestic, and complete piece of Nature's architecture 
which I have seen in any part of the world. It is one vast 
rock which, in some points of view almost regular enough to 
look like a work of art, towers up with its well-squared pre- 
cipices to a height of nearly two thousand feet (about two- 
thirds the height of Helvellyn), the tabular platform at its 
summit being large enough to support a city. It commands 
probably the noblest view in Grreece, except those which expand 
beneath the higher acclivities of Delphi. That view, simple at 
once, and ornate, and as ample as it is beautiful, extends over 
the most interesting portions of Hellas. On one side lies the 
Egean, with the Bay of Salamis, Egina, and many a glistening 
island; on the other, the Gulf of Lepanto, a lake eighty miles 
long, into which descend, from the south, the mountains of the 
Morea, and from the north, in marvelous perspective, the 
ranges of Parnassus, Helicon, and Citheron. Those mountains 
I had been gazing at for several days in succession; but thus 
looking upon them from a height about the fourth part of their 
own, the effect was incomparably finer, the loss of elevation 
produced by foreshortening being obviated. 

On the summit of the Corinthian Acropolis lie the ruins of 
houses, churches, and mosques, burned during the war ; and in 
two places, amid this Babylonian confusion, there still recline 
a few snow-white pillars belonging to two temples, one of them 
supposed to have been the Temple of Yenus. Ruined as they 
are, they look perfect still in ruin, from their faultless and satis- 
factory completeness of proportion, their unviolated purity of 
tint, their beauty of texture and unblunted perfection of detail, 



m 



OF GREECE AND TURKEY. 45 

which could hardly have been surpassed by an artist sculp- 
turing the form of that divinity to which one of them was dedi- 
cated. Neither moss nor lichen assails them, and even the 
ground-ivy reverently abstains from them. At the eastern 
side of the summit, that side first greeted by the morning salu- 
tation of the god who dwelt within sight, at Delphi, is a fount- 
ain. Above the dark pure water, the rock is carved into the 
likeness of a temple seen from one end, with architrave and 
ant^; and all round are inscriptions, the vows, no doubt, of 
votaries. That fountain is Peirene, the spring at which Pe- 
gasus was drinking when caught by Bellerophon. From this 
aerial summit, he soared above the Egean. Lest I should share 
the fate of the hero, and fall "headlong through the fields of 
air,'^ I shall rein in all unnecessary enthusiasm, and leave you 
to believe in the Horse of the Muses or not, as you please. It 
is not wholly a question of inclination — without the muse no 
one can believe in their "winged steed.^^ 

Remembering that a long journey lay before us, we left the 
summit of the Acropolis many hours earlier than we should 
otherwise have done, and made the long and toilsome descent 
to the plain. Descending from the crest of the hill, we reached 
the outer enclosure, passed through a gate and ancient tower 
which guards it, and, in succession, passed some other towers 
and another gate, a battery, and a fortress, and at last reached 
the first gate, and the drawbridge which connects the walled 
enclosure with the path which winds down along the craggy 
ledges to the plain. There exist a few other vestiges of anti- 
quity, besides those I have named, in the neighborhood of 
Corinth; about a quarter of a mile from it, and at the eastern 
side, for example, remains an amphitheatre, of which a few 
steps, excavated in the rock, still are traced. At the distance 
of about seven miles, and near the Saronic gulf, is the Isthmian 
plain, which still preserves some inconsiderable traces of its 



46 PICTURESQUE SKETCHES 

ancient stadium as well as of a theatre. Not far distant are 
memorials of a later age, and of a very different state of society ; 
the excavations of the canal by which Nero endeavored to cut 
through the Isthmus of Corinth. The same enterprise is spoken 
of still as desirable J but I suspect that the Isthmus of Panama 
will be cut through first. Hercules, on a memorable occasion, 
divided a wall of mountain for the purpose of draining a lake; 
and many additional comments will be written on his heroic 
labors, explaining them in a philosophical, a historical, and 
an industrial sense, before a people so versatile and so eloquent 
as the Grreeks, labor perse veringly, and labor in combination, 
on a great utilitarian work. 

Late in the evening we arrived at Callimachi, a little port on 
the Saronic Grulf, and the ordinary place of embarkation for 
Athens. We immediately hired a boat; but till midnight the 
wind was pronounced unfavorable, and I was obliged to while 
away the time lying on a bench near the shore, and sleeping 
when the songs of the boatmen permitted sleep. About twelve 
o'clock we cast loose; but the sea powers had not been duly 
propitiated; and though we sailed all night, and all the next 
day, it was not till evening that we approached the Peiraeus. 
Again the wind fell, and it became but too plain that it was 
only by the greatest efforts that we could reach the harbor be- 
fore nine o'clock, the latest hour at which people are allowed 
to land. The sailors who calculated on a good buonamano, 
furled their sails, and pulled lustily with their oars; while our 
brilliant Albanian, who, finding nothing to amuse him, had 
slept during the whole of the day, came up to me clapping his 
hands, and exclaiming, " You sleep tranquil at Athens to-night. 
You eat roast-beef — plenty. You much comfortable. You 
see my fine clothes to-morrow." Vehemently did he adjure 
the sailors to row hard, alternately threatening them and making 
them promises. We had arrived within a few yards of the 



OF GREECE AND TURKEY. 47 

harbor-moutli when the signal gun pealed. Poor Elias ground 
his teeth, muttered '^sacresti/^ and in another moment, without 
further observation, folded his cloak about him, lay down on 
the deck, and composed himself to sleep. I could not follow 
his example. We had at last arrived at Athens, and yet were 
not allowed to tread her soil. For some hours I watched the 
lights on the shores of the Peireeus. A few ships were moored 
near us, and now we heard a chain rattle, and now the rigging 
strain. A light burned in the prow of a fishing-boat further 
oflf ; and a laugh and a song come to us by fits across the dim 
and glassy sea. Every sound was significant, and the silence 
that succeeded the last seemed the suspended breath of expec- 
tation. Exhausted at last, I lay down on the stones in the 
bottom of the boat, and in a few minutes was asleep. I woke 
early in the morning, and rose at once. The cold, pale lights 
of dawn lay in streaks and flakes on the pearly main, and 
mildly and sadly revealed the green hill that cut it, leaving 
the remoter landscape in a gentle gloom. Athens was invisi- 
ble, but not its crown. Pronting the dawn, and relieved against 
a dark sky, stood the Acropolis and the Parthenon. 



48 PICTURESQUE SKETCHES 



CHAPTER III. 

THE ACROPOLIS OF ATHENS. 

Relation of the Acropolis to Athens — Dimensions of the Acropolis — The 
walls of Themistocles — The Propylea — The Temple of " Victory 
without Wings" — The Parthenon — The Panathenaic procession — 
Fragmentary sculpture. 

You will easily believe that my first visit at Athens was 
to the Acropolis. As Athens was the intellectual centre^ and 
remains to this day the great exponent of Grreecej so was the 
Acropolis crowned with its votive temples and commemorative 
sculptures, the high imaginative embodiment of Athens itself. 
It was Athens idealized ; exhibited as it lived in the imagina- 
tion of an Athenian, and as it has survived in the heart of the 
world. Whatever existed in the city below stood revealed in a 
more glorious unity, and free from all encumbering pettiness of 
detail, in the city above. There art was represented by the no- 
blest works of Phidias. There war was represented by the de- 
fensive Propylea, the Minerva Promachos, and the golden 
shields with which (the offerings of successive conquerors re- 
turning from many a well-fought field) the eastern end of the 
Parthenon was adorned. There commerce was represented in 
the sacred treasury, included within the walls of the Parthenon. 
There the most sacred traditions and religious affections were 
represented; for there, amid other memorials, was the olive 
tree which rose out of the earth at the command of Minerva, 
when she contended in rivalship with Neptune; the mystic 
plant, parent of every tree that supplied the home of each Athe- 



OF GREECE AND TURKEY. 49 

nian with its frugal repast, or lighted the lamp beside his 
hearth. It was thus that everythiog great and noble at Athens 
found a representative in the serial city that crowned the 
Acropolis : but on that sacred height there was no demagogue 
feeding the people with wind; no judicial tribunal commending 
the hemlock cup to the lips of Socrates; no populace sending 
Themistocles into banishment ; no idlers inquiring for '■'■ some 
new thing/^ when a man of Macedon was dictating terms to 
Athens and to Gi-reeee. The pictures of the middle ages are 
frequently divided into two compartments, a terrestrial and a 
celestial, and the deeds enacted in the lower division, by men 
yet in the flesh, are contemplated from above by a company of 
spirits assoiled from the taint of mortality. It was thus that the 
Acropolitan Athens kept watch from its regions of peace over 
the Athens of the plain. Its marble gods, demigods, and he- 
roes constituted the chorus that looked down upon the drama 
acted from day to day beneath their feet, and approved or dis- 
approved. 

Knowing that the lesser ever receives its interpretation from 
the greater, I resolved to make myself well acquainted with the 
treasures of the Acropolis before I explored the rest of Athens. I 
would advise every traveler to adopt the same course, but to 
do so at his leisure, not allowing his imagination to become 
unduly excited, or his spirits to be flurried. The great art of 
seeing things in travel consists in the management of the mind. 
If we visit an interesting spot without having read or thought 
enough about it to render the mind apprehensive, we either 
miss its historical interest altogether, or are reduced to study 
our guide book, when we should be looking around us, and to 
learn our lesson instead of enjoying our feast. If on the other 
hand we have thought over the matter too eagerly, and too often, 
the reality is sure to fall short of our expectation. 
5 . 



50 PICTURESQUE SKETCHES 

Experience had taught me many such lessons as these; and 
when I set out for the Acropolis it was with a firm resolution 
of turning my hack upon it at the last moment, if any unlucky 
chance seemed likely to interfere with a leisurely inspection of 
it. How often has a sharp wind, a shower of rain, a deficiency 
of time, or an idle and troublesome companion, prevented a 
traveler from being able to profit by an opportunity never 
again to be offered ! The worst calamity perhaps which can 
happen to him is that of falling in with an exploring party, 
who have already spread their luncheon in the midst of the 
ruins — cold meat and warm wine, and English porter at three 
shillings a bottle ! When such a disaster occurs, a speedy 
retreat on the part of the intruder is the only remedy. On 
this occasion however, everything turned out propitiously. 
The wind which the day before had been chilled by the snows 
of the mountains, came from the sea, fresh at once and warm. 
The spring flowers were already rising in thick tufts on the 
grassy slopes, including most of those which grow in our 
gardens, and everything told me that the hour was auspicious. 

If there existed nothing worth seeing in Greece except the 
Acropolis of Athens, and if the way thither were a wilderness, 
it would still be one of the spots on earth most worthy of a 
pilgrimage. It might indeed be better never to see it than to 
see it only once or twice, and with feelings as tumultuous as 
under such circumstances would naturally be those of a man 
treading the ground trodden of old by the greatest poets, phi- 
losophers, orators, and statesmen whom the world has ever 
seen. To wander there repeatedly, however, to enjoy a silence 
broken but by voices from the past, to idle there and then to 
explore, to sleep there in the sunshine and to waken suddenly, 
to forget where you are and to be acidentally reminded of it 
by the first object on which your eye rests, to see your own old 
thoughts rising up from behind prostrate pillar or broken frieze, 



OF GREECE AND TURKEY. 51 

and beckoning you on toward a company of better thouglits 
but half your own — this is to visit the Acropolis, and for this 
few efforts would be too great. 

I will begin my description of the Acropolis in a very pro- 
saic way, namely by stating its dimensions. It is an oval hill 
which ascends to the height of about two hundred feet, the 
summit being a thousand feet long by half that breadth. At 
two-thirds of the elevation the green sod ceases, and in its 
place the rock rises perpendicularly like a rampart, until it 
blends with the walls of the fortress. The stones of those 
walls are so large as to harmonize with the masses of rock that 
support them; but they are too carefully wrought to allow of 
your mistaking them for rock. I was much impressed on ob- 
serving in the wall at one side of the Acropolis, fragments of 
fluted columns, inserted as building stones, as well as pieces of 
cornice, triglyphs and metopes, with here and there, broken 
fragments of sculpture. We are reminded of men more vividly 
by the accidental obstacles with which they had to contend 
than by the labors which, without let or hinderance, embodied 
designs conceived in the stillness of thought. Themistocles 
was brought before me with the strength of reality as my eye 
fell on this part of the fortress, and I remembered that he had 
been compelled by the necessities of the time to build in haste, 
using as materials whatever came to hand, especially the frag- 
ments of the temple of Minerva, overthrown by the Persians, 
and replaced by the Parthenon. The greatest works of human 
genius have thus been ever in part extempore and occasional 
works. They have been rooted in the need of the hour, though 
their blossom renews itself from year to year; and to the end 
of time with their philosophical or artistic worth an historical 
interest is blended. Men of ambitious imaginations retire into 
their study and devise some " magmcm ojjus" which, like the world 
itself, is to be created out of nothing, and to hang self-balanced 



52 PICTURESQUE SKETCHES 

on its own centre: — after much puffing, however^ the world 
which they produce is apt to turn out but a well-sized bubble. 
Men of another order labor but to provide for some practical 
need; and their work, humble, perhaps occasional in its design, 
is found to contain the elements that make human toils inde- 
structible. Homer sang, no doubt, in part to kindle patriotism 
among his countrymen, in part to amuse his village audience, 
and in part to procure a good night's lodging, as he wandered 
on Grecian and Asiatic shores; but the great idea of his song 
was stout enough notwithstanding to light its way through all 
obstructions, and to orb itself out into completeness. Shak- 
speare wrote in part for practical objects of a less elevated 
nature; Hooker's Ecclesiastical Polity was intended to compose 
the strifes of the time; and Burke's great work on the French 
Kevolution was but thrown out as a bastion to protect the 
British citadel from French jacobinism ; although, working in 
haste and prodigal of his wealth, he inserted into it many a 
passage of poetry or philosophy too good for its place — pas- 
sages in one sense as misapplied as the fragments of sculpture 
in the wall of Themistocles. 

After mounting a long but not a steep ascent, I reached the 
Propylea, or entrance to the fortress. This building was raised 
a little more than half a century after the battle of Marathon, 
and was intended by Pericles simply to serve as a defensive 
gate to the interior of the citadel ; but the genius of its archi- 
tect, Mnesicles, rendered it a structure hardly less remarkable 
than the Parthenon itself. The summit of the former building 
is on a level with the base of the latter. Stuart has represented 
it very correctly in his drawings, and Colonel Leake not less so 
in his description ; though I believe that both of them were in- 
debted for their knowledge of the building exclusively to Pau- 
sanias, whose account of it was, fortunately, minute. It is cer- 
tain, at least, that a;t the conclusion of the war, not a stone of 



OF GREECE AND TURKEY. 63 

tbe Propylea was visible ; indeed, the laborers had dug four 
feet through the rubbish before they reached the cornice and 
capitals. This building consists of a Doric portico, sixty feet 
wide, the columns, which are sis in number, being about thirty 
feet high. Behind them- — not parallel to them, however, but 
placed at right angles, and stationed at each side of the way 
into the interior— is a range of Ionic pillars. The portico 
is flanked by two buildings, nearly square, projecting consider- 
ably in advance of it, and built likewise of Pentelican marble. 
These buildings were originally picture-galleries, and the paint- 
ings of Polygnotus adorned their storied walls. What would 
we not give to be able to restore but one of those pictures and 
compare it with the specimens of ancient paintings disinterred 
at Pompeii? The rubbish so long accumulated about the 
Propylea has, in one respect, discharged as friendly an office as 
the lava, to which we are indebted for the conservation of so 
much at Herculaneum ; it has preserved for its columns and 
ruined walls a purity of whiteness absolutely dazzling, when 
the sun shines upon them. Those columns are nearly perfect. 
Around them lie fragments of their capitals, as well as of the 
architrave and frieze, the vast size of which imparts to them a 
character of imposing grandeur. One of them, which I mea- 
sured, is twenty-five feet in length -, and though it belonged to 
the summit of the building, its minutest details are finished 
with a perfection which would have wearied a Chinese carver 
in ivory. 

A little to the right of the Propylea, and on a platform 
slightly elevated, stands another temple, that of the " Wing- 
less Victory,'^ released from darkness, like a captive set free, 
since the conclusion of the war. Pericles built this small but 
exquisite structure on the Acropolis, to intimate that the most 
wandering of the divinities had taken her permanent stand on 
that spot. A boast is commonly made better in spoken words 

5* 



54 PICTURESQUE SKETCHES 

than in writtenj and should, least of all, be written in a material 
so intractable and unchangeable as marble : notwithstanding, 
Pericles, if he were called to account, would be able to make a 
good defence ; for Athens succeeded in raising an empire, the 
only terrestrial one which has proved permanent, and one which 
daily pushes its frontiers further out — that of Mind. The 
wingless Victory enjoyed a prospect which might have atoned 
to her for the loss of her plumes. She gazed right over the 
bay of Salamis, where, some forty years before, she had touched 
the fleet of Xerxes, in passing with a flying hand ; and she 
beheld the island of Egina, in the caverns of which the Athe- 
nians had hidden their wives and children when they aban- 
doned their capital. Contented she may have been ; and yet 
when a wind much less rough as a wooer than that which car- 
ried off Orithyia, blew from the purple mountains of the 
Morea, and made the /^ wine black'^ sea flash in the sun, the 
Goddess must sometimes have longed for her wings again, that 
she might cast herself upon it. Wheeler and Spon saw this 
temple in the seventeenth century. At the time of Stuart it 
had so completely disappeared, that men doubted whether it 
had existed in modern times. The Archaeological Society suc- 
ceeded in ascertaining the exact spot specified by Pausanias, and, 
removing the rubbish, found almost every part of the temple 
perfect. It had been thrown down to make way for a Turkish 
battery; but no injury had been done to the fragments, and 
after a careful study of the plan, no difficulty was experienced 
in restoring the building. It consists of a small but beautifully 
proportioned cella, graced with four Ionic pillars at each end. 
Its frieze was decorated with sculptures commemorative of the 
battle of Marathon. 

Leaving this temple to the right, I continued to advance, 
ascending along tho ancient ground of the Acropolis, which is 
now laid bare. On I strayed among fallen capitals and frag- 



OF GREECE AND TURKEY. 55 

ments of columns bathed in the sunshine^ many of them so 
large that I could but just see over them, and not a few em- 
bossed with sculpture or covered with inscriptions. All around 
lay triglyphs and metopes, trunks of centaurs, heads of horses, 
manes of lions, and among them the workers of the ruin — - 
flattened cannon-balls, and splinters of Turkish shells. In a 
few moments I stood before the Parthenon. Its western front, 
the first part on which my eye rested, is almost wholly unin- 
jured. The pillars are perfect, the architrave and cornice 
equally so ; and a few of the sculptures between the trigliphs 
still remain. The pediment has sustained but little damage, 
and still retains possession of the two colossal statues which 
resisted all Lord Elgin's eiforts to remove them. They formed 
a part of that great composition in which Phidias represented 
the contest of Minerva and Neptune for Athens — a contest 
probably symbolical of a question which may one day have 
divided Athenian statesmen, namely, whether the State which 
they moulded ought to seek her supremacy at sea or by 
land. The group within the eastern pediment represented 
the birth of Minerva ; and the ninety-two compartments 
of the frieze, which surrounded the temple, illustrated her 
achievements, and those of the early Athenian heroes whom 
she had guided and inspired. The character of Minerva was 
certainly the noblest conception of Greek religion. Whether 
we consider her mystical birth, as the glorious apparition pro- 
ceeded all-perfect and mature from the head of the Father of 
Grods and men, her virgin estate, her serene valor resisting all 
aggression, or her sacred and practical wisdom, we trace in this 
mythic idea a faint approximation to one yet more exalted, 
that of the Christian Church as contemplated by the mind of 
early Christendom. That the Athenians should have chosen 
for their patroness a divinity with whose austere sanctitude 
they had, perhaps, less in common than with any other of the 



66 PICTURESQUE SKETCHES 

deities, is a remarkable instance of the fact that men admire 
most the qualities in which thej are most deficient. Such, how- 
ever, was the case. The Parthenon was so called from the 
goddess to whom Athens and all it contained was dedicated, 
and means " The Temple of the Yirgin.^^ 

Passing under the peristyle, you reach the cella or body of 
the temple, in the west end of which the Athenian treasury 
was kept, while in the eastern end, or sanctuary, the colossal 
statue of the goddess, wrought by Phidias in ivory and gold, 
was enshrined. It was around this cella that the most beau- 
tiful of relievos, the Panathenaic procession, was ranged. 
Though we possess in the British Museum so large a part of 
it, another portion still; holds its ground where it has a better 
right to be, and the western end of the cella, at least, continues 
undefrauded and inviolate. The members of the frieze which 
remain are exactly the same in spirit as those on which your 
eye rests every day that you are at home ; and the hospitality 
which you had afforded to those strangers " from a far countree'' 
made me feel, when I saw their companions, as if I were 
meeting old friends. There they stood as in the days of old, 
when their placid aspect tranquilized many a heart disquieted 
by the last news from the Peloponnesian war ; priests walk- 
ing in procession with steps attuned to harmonies unheard by 
us; venerable elders, and beautiful matrons seated in attri- 
butes of sedate repose, yet incapable of lassitude, calmly 
observant of the ceremonial, or engaged in slow but earnest 
converse; warriors holding horses by the head, or balanced 
on them with a pliant grace, as though man and horse had 
constituted, ''like the feigned Centaur, but one animal;'' 
youths dragged forward bulls that plant their feet resolutely 
before them, as if they smelt their own blood on the ground, 
and low against the skies; little boys, modest, tractable, and 
orderly, who console themselves apparently for an unusual 



OF GREECE AND TURKEY. 67 

constraint, by a deep conviction that on their discretion, the 
success of the rite mainly depends; and here and there 

"Shaggy goats that eye the mountain top 
Askance, and riot with reluctant horn." 

I was interested by observing on the walls, in many places, 
the remains of the paint with which they were once adorned. 
It was at one time the fashion to extol the ancients for the 
purity of their taste in contemning the colored decorations 
which we moderns rejoice in. The fact has turned out, on more 
minute inquiry, to have been far otherwise. The Greeks were 
by no means purists; and though of course nothing that they 
produced was tawdry in effect, the greater portion of their 
temples was painted, both within and without, with a large 
variety of colors. Their idol-statues (those to which' they at- 
tached peculiar religious honors at least) were also colored in 
the hair, the eyes, and the dress. Such coloring, however^ 
was assuredly no barbarous imitation of life, but aimed at an 
ideal effect } and probably, without being out of harmony with 
nature, it invested the image with a supernatural character, 
and struck the beholder with awe. 

How lamentable that this temple, which for so many cen- 
turies had triumphed over time, should at last have been so 
mutilated and maimed! A single shell which fell upon its 
roof during the Venetian siege destroyed what ages had spared; 
and though the two ends of the building and much of the sides 
are tolerably perfect, the centre part of the structure suffered 
in a moment what many a year will not restore. Among the 
ruins, as I roamed through the scene of devastation, lay a few 
fragments of the frieze, belonging, for the most part, to the 
Bouthern side. Such remains, you will naturally suppose, 
broken as those beautiful sculptures commonly were, to have 
presented but a melancholy spectacle; the fact, however, was 



58 PICTURESQUE SKETCHES 

far otherwisej and this is assuredly not the least among the 
triumphs of the Phidian art. So profound was the serenity of 
expression which characterized these fragments of sculpture, 
that it seemed to accord equally with all fortunes. That tran- 
quillity was not noticeable in the head only, but manifested 
itself, where the head no longer existed, in every limb and 
gesture; and the eternal repose of those shattered relics as 
they lay there in the sun, challenged rather envy than com- 
passion. Fragmentary sculpture has its own especial value, 
and among the losses sustained by art, as in all other losses, 
the law of compensation prevails. What is thus lost in com- 
pleteness is often gained in pathos. It is also to be* remem- 
bered that the beauty of the human form in detail is only to 
be appreciated when its different portions are presented to us 
separately. Under more fortunate circumstances the details 
are lost in the whole, and the head will not let the eye wander 
to the extremities. 

The beauty of fragmentary sculpture was on this occasion 
singularly brought home to me by an accident. As I wandered 
about the Acropolis, I found, on a part where some remains 
had lately been dug up, a marble foot, which enchanted me by 
its perfection of form. Had it been the foot of the " silver- 
footed goddess," who ran along the waves of the sea, it could 
not in its dazzling radiance and multitudinous curves have ex- 
pressed a more winged lightness or a more pliant grace. As I 
gazed on it, it seemed to reveal as much of physiognomic cha- 
racter as Lavater could have found in the countenance he had 
studied most minutely. More than once I laid it down, and 
returned to it again, to indulge in one glance more. It gained 
upon me; the nymph-like foot gradually suggested the hand, 
and that again the curved and placid brow. Again and 
again I imagined what must have been the form which that 
benign, frank, joyous, and immaculate foot supported — that 



OF GREECE AND TURKEY. 69 

foot whicli contained so much more than I ever before knew 
was to be found in a foot. I was obliged at last, by the inter- 
ruption of some laborers, to lay aside both my reverie and that 
which had occasioned it. Mine, however, was not the only 
reverie that has rested on a slender foundation. Just such a 
foot is the world we inhabit, as revealed to our senses, and to 
our faculty conversant with sense. Our philosophers are very 
prompt to draw inferences as to the whole, from that lower 
portion of the moral world which stands upon the level of their 
apprehension; but, until the delineations which they draw 
resemble each other, I suppose we shall always doubt as to the 
authenticity of that complete image which they so fluently 
describe. 

After examining the Parthenon in detail, I contemplated it 
often from a distance, and with an admiration ever increasing. 
There is a simple and unpresuming majesty in those grave 
Doric temples, which sinks more deeply into the mind the more 
steadily we regard them. The perfection of their proportions 
is also such as a transient or careless glance will not detect. 
Few persons, for this reason, are aware of one important cir- 
cumstance to which the ancient temple owed much of that com- 
plete and satisfactory beauty which pleases even those who 
have not discovered the cause of their pleasure, and the absence 
of which gives a harsh, raw, mechanic aspect to many a build- 
ing intended to be an exact copy of it. I allude to the circum- 
stance that its outlines, instead of being rectilinear, are, in a 
very slight degree, curvilinear. On closely studying the Par- 
thenon, I observed that in base and cornice alike there is 
at each side a slight elevation towards the centre. Every 
pillar swells also at its middle, and all of them bend also in- 
wards in a slight degree, those at the corners slanting diago- 
nally toward the centre of the building. In the whole temple, 
in fact, which thus leans in on itself and slightly swells upward, 



60 PICTURESQUE SKETCHES 

there is not a single perfectly straight line. It was with Greek 
architecture as with Greek poetry — there was, in each, a per- 
fection of proportion which is felt rather than seen, and which 
defies the imitation of those who can only measure mechani- 
cally with plummet and square. The Madeleine of Paris is no 
more a Greek temple than a tragedy of Racine is a tragedy of 
Sophocles. 



OF GREECE AND TURKEY. 61 



CHAPTER IV. 

THE ACROPOLIS OF ATHENS. 

Temple of Minerva Polias — The relics it once contained — The porch of 
the Caryatides — The theatre of Herodes Atticus — Cave of Pan — Cave 
of Aglaurus — Tragic theatre of Athens — The Acropolis as it once M^as 
— -Vievi^ from the Acropolis — Lycabettus — Spirit of Athenian religion. 

The Parthenon, though the noblest temple, was not the 
most revered sanctuary on the Acropolis. In this respect 
Athens resembled many cities of modern Europe, the largest 
church in which, though without a rival as to wealth and 
beauty, is yet in dignity inferior to some smaller building of an 
earlier time. St. Peter's, for example, is not the cathedral of 
Rome; both St. John Lateran and Santa Maria Maggiore take 
precedence of it ; and the glorious Duomo of Milan is less vene- 
rated than the church which preserves the memorials of St. 
Ambrose and St. Augustin. The temple of Minerva Polias, 
which stands to the north of the Parthenon, not far from the 
edge of the rock, was conceived to be the especial haunt of the 
goddess who had taken the city under her protection in the 
legendary time of King Cecrops, when gods and men mixed 
familiarly together, and Mars himself underwent trial for homi- 
cide before the court of Areopagus. It was in that temple, 
built on the site of a yet earlier one, that the statue of Miner- 
va, made of olive-wood, and supposed to have fallen from 
heaven, was preserved — ^^a statue probably far more venerated 
than the colossal divinity which Phidias placed in the Parthe- 
6 



62 PICTURESQUE SKETCHES 

non. There also burned the lamp which was never extinguished, 
and which was replenished with oil but once a year. It was to 
that temple that the sacred veil was brought from Eleusis by 
the Panathenaic procession. In that temple the mystic ser- 
pent of the Acropolis had his abode 3 in it were preserved the 
throne of Xerxes, and the sword of Mardonius. But it had 
memorials also of an earlier and holier time. It enshrined the 
tomb of Erectheus, one of the Athenian kings, and it com- 
memorated the contest between Minerva and Neptune. It 
contained the sacred olive which rose from the earth at the 
command of the goddess, and which sprung up again after the 
Persians had burned the fane ; and in the votive chapel dedi- 
cated to Pandrosus it enclosed the salt spring which leaped 
from the rock when Neptune struck the ground with his trident. 
The temple of Minerva Polias, or, as it is sometimes called, 
the Erectheum, is of Ionic architecture, nor has there ever ex- 
isted a more perfect specimen of that graceful order. In length 
it is seventy-three feet, and in breadth thirty-seven, measuring 
the interior cella, without counting the portico of six pillars at 
the eastern end. Another portico of four pillars in front, with 
two retiring pillars, adorned the northern side of the building. 
At the opposite side is the beautiful porch of the Caryatides, in 
which virgins, attired in the religious costume of the Panathe- 
naic solemnity, take the place of pillars, and support the pro- 
jecting cornice on their broad and sedate brows, which in that 
cornice seem rather to wear a crown than to sustain a burthen. 
I was much impressed by the pathetic beauty of this silent sis- 
terhood. Of the original six four remain unsubverted : a fifth 
was discovered among the ruins — unfortunately, however, with- 
out a head; and the sixth enjoys the British Protectorate. Let 
us hope that it will one day be restored, and take its stand 
among its "companions equal-aged" for another period of two 
thousand years before it is again reduced to that necessity from 



OF GREECE AND TURKEY. 63 

which in barbarous times statues are no more exempt than 
exiled princes — a necessity of seeing the world. 

The loss of this Caryatis^ when Lord Elgin carried it off, 
occasioned more disturbance of heart at Athens than the removal 
of the frieze of the Parthenon. The rights of hospitality were 
violated, as the Athenians thought, by the summary mode in 
which their captive guest was removed from the abode which 
had sheltered her so long beneath a sky not less temperate than 
that of Phrygia; and perhaps they deemed a gallery in the 
cloudy north but a dungeon compared with the mild prison in 
which they had so long detained her. The strength of their 
feeling on this subject is attested by a belief which prevails to 
this day among the people, a belief that on the night of her 
second captivity her five remaining sisters were heard to lament 
with loud sobbings her fate and their own loss. All night long, 
as the story goes, the voice Df lamentation was echoed among 
the pillars and wafted eastward over the sea; nor was it till the 
next morning that the sacred breasts of the mourners were re- 
visited by their ancient peace, and that the beams of the rising 
sun dried the tears upon their stony faces. The legend at least 
proves that the Athenians have not wholly lost that poetic 
spirit which called temples and statues into existence when they 
slept in the quarries of Pentelicus. 

Considerable progress has been made in the restoration of 
the temples on the Acropolis, and there is n.o reason why that 
noble work should not one day be completed. The king, on his 
first visit to the Arcropolis, promised that he would, if it should 
ever be in his power, restore it to what it had once been. 
Want of funds has proved the great obstacle, hitherto, to this 
pious undertaking. Why was not a European subscription 
raised for the restoration of that which has ever been the intel- 
lectual metropolis of Europe, as Rome was, for so many centu- 
ries, its religious metropolis, and in the good estate of which 



64 PICTURESQUE SKETCHES 

the children of all climes have nearly an equal interest ? Why 
have not the wealthy English (those who, in the appropriately 
religious language of the day, are "blessed with opulence'') 
by whom Athens has been visited since its independence, de- 
voted to a purpose which, while it effected a nobler object, 
would also have worthily commemorated their names, a few 
hundreds out of the thousands which they spend annually in 
sordid luxuries or vain display ? The cost would, it is asserted, 
be by no means considerable. Should these temples ever be 
restored they would constitute the most suitable receptacles for 
the sculpture which sooner or later is sure of being discovered 
beneath the soil of Grreece. They would, at least, furnish the 
most appropriate asylum for the statues disinterred in Attica. 
The other cities of Grreece might, perhaps, claim to be the de- 
positories of the sculpture found in their respective neighbor- 
hoods ; and, indeed, it would be advisable to encourage a local 
spirit of emulation on the subject. If the Parthenon, when 
restored, could not fitly be made the Cathedral of Athens, like 
the Roman courts of justice, which were thus consecrated to 
religion, when the heathen had become part of the inheritance 
of the Church — and for such a destination the inappropriate 
character of its sculpture would perhaps make it unsuitable — 
it should remain, at least, a Temple of Art, which, inclusively, 
it always was. It should never, however, be crammed; and 
the neighboring temples should have their share of the precious 
relics. 

I have often thought with how much more advantage we 
should study works of art if they were lodged in a number of 
separate receptacles, various in size and in architecture, than '^^ 
crowded together as they so commonly are in a single gallery, 
such as the Louvre, without any rational method or order, 
whether based upon subject, era, or school, and placed so close 
to each other that we cannot contemplate a martyrdom of St. 



OF GREECE AND TURKEY. 65 

Agnes without the eye wandering on to a Callisto or a Danae. 
Impression thus destroys impression ; or^ rather, it may be said, 
that a deep impression can never thus be formed. It would 
not have been more impossible for the age of Cimabue to have 
produced a Guido than it is for a man to appreciate a picture 
by the former just after he has been contemplating one by the 
latter. Really to understand a work of art requires a state of 
mind at least, if not a habit of mind, corresponding with that 
of the artist. Such a state is formed with difficulty, and is 
speedily erased — especially if the mind be susceptive — by an- 
tagonistic impressions. That the character of a genuine work 
of art should be discerned by one whose imagination is tossed 
backward and forward by the appeals and counter-appeals of 
our heterogeneous collections is as impossible as that the face of 
nature should be reflected in waves as clearly as in still water. 
Even in those equivocal publications, books of extracts, a 
certain degree of order is observed, and the reader is not ex- 
pected to relish alternate morsels of King Lear and of Hudibras, 
or to season Paradise Lost with Lalla Rookh. Our collections 
of Art are books of extracts put together with a more vulgar 
promiscuousness. Until, in these matters, we acquire a little 
rational sensibility we must admit that pictures and statues are, 
with us, rather a matter of pride than of imaginative or moral de- 
light, and that we consider them less as objects of affi3ction than 
as part of the furniture of a great city. The several buildings 
in which works of art are enshrined, ought, however, though 
separate, to be near each other, that the student may be able 
to pass easily from one to another; and should, if possible, group 
together, forming a city of their own — a city of immortality, 
like that "city of the dead" which in so many an Italian 
" Campo Santo" adjoins the city of the living. Nature has 
seldom facilitated such a design as she does in the instance of 
the Athenian Acropolis ; there are, however, even in our north- 

6* 



66 PICTURESQUE SKETCHES 

ern cities^ sites which suggest this high destination, as in the 
case of Edinburgh, where the Calton Hill presents a ^^ Mons 
Sacer'^. worthy of sustaining a great nation's treasures of art, as 
well as her historical monuments. London is less fortunate ; 
and though she may build a palace of art, she has no site 
wholly appropriate to it. Let us hope, however, that even if 
the Elgin marbles and the stuffed birds are destined to remain 
for ever beneath one roof, as in a common sense, "curiosities," 
the present dusty auction rooms and dingy vaults of Trafalgar 
Square will one day give place to a Grallery, in which each 
school of art is allowed a room to itself. We have many a 
picture, each of which deserves as much. 

Hitherto the remains of ancient sculpture discovered in 
G-reece since its independence has not been of very high value. 
There is, however, nothing discouraging in this circumstance, 
for as yet no sufficient search has been made for them. The 
Acropolis, indeed, has been effectually probed, and not without 
important, though not always fortunate results. The excava- 
tions made there have in one respect done much harm, in con- 
sequence of the stupidity and petty economy with which they 
have been conducted. The rubbish dug up has in some places 
been thrown over the side of the steep, instead of being re- 
moved to a distance; the consequence of which is that where 
the rock once rose like a wall there exists now but an unmean- 
ing slope. How much the apparent elevation, and the gran- 
deur of a hill depends on its shape, must have been felt by 
any one who has visited the most beautiful city to the north of 
the Alps-^Edinburgh, and observed that mountainous character 
which is imparted to the " Salisbury Grags," and to "Arthur's 
Seat" by their shape and geological formation. Whenever ex- 
cavations are carried out on a large scale in Greece, it is 
impossible but that many remains of antiquity will be disco- 
vered. We shall probably be indebted for yet more such to the 



OF GREECE AND TURKEY. 67 

progress of agriculture; for who can doubt that when the 
plains of Argos, Elis, Epidaurus, &c., are turned up, they will 
yield something besides corn crops ? The Romans, the chief 
pillagers of the world, carried off multitudes of statues — indeed, 
in the time of Trajan it was a common saying, that at Rome 
there were as many marble statues as human beings. They 
never, however, contemplated art except with a horny eye "fat 
with pride" and dim with the lust of conquest, and they pro- 
bably left untouched not a few of the best works. Like many 
a modern " Milord,'^ they would have been determined by 
names in their selection of their prey ; and the old Greek, who 
like the modern Italian boasted that he was "molto astuto,^' 
would soon have hit on the device of making his best statues 
submit ta an alias or an incognito. The Turks, probably, car- 
ried on the work of destruction most fiercely when their religious 
zeal burned most brightly ; and at a later period, they are said 
to have occasionally shot the heads of statues out of their can- 
nons for want of better ammunition. A little sacrilege of this 
sort would be very useful among us now and then. He would 
be no small benefactor to art who cleansed the Pantheon of St. 
Paul's; and turned Westminster Abbey back into a church! 

The remains of the many buildings that once adorned the 
base, and lower slope of the Acropolis, give one at the present 
day but a poor conception of the glorious spectacle which every 
morning saluted the eye of an Athenian. Of these the most 
considerable is the Theatre of Herodes Atticus. It belongs to 
a comparatively late period, and boasts little of that purity or 
beauty which belongs to the early Greek models. One rejoices, 
notwithstanding, to find. that the liberality of a foreigner and a 
philosopher continues to preserve his memory. In the rock 
beneath the citadel there are two caves, each of which retains 
a legendary fame. One of them was that dedicated to Pan, iii 
gratitude for the aid which he rendered to the Athenians at 



68 PICTURESQUE SKETCHES 

the battle of Marathon. The other is supposed to be the 
Sacred Cave of AglauruS; one of the daughters of CecropS; the 
first king of Attica, who led thither an Egyptian colony about 
the year B. C. 1556. There is a legend respecting Aglaurus, 
(the sister of Pandrosos) according to which Mercury, dis- 
pleased at the jealousy with which she watched his love for her 
sister Herse, turned her into a stone. Another legend states 
that she leaped from the summit of the rock, and by thus offering 
up her life, delivered her country. It was in this cave that the 
Athenian youths were first clad in arms by the State which 
they vowed to defend ; to them, therefore, it was as the chapel 
in which the Christian Knight kept vigil besides his armor 
during the night on which he was dedicated to his chivalrous 
mission. Above this cave stands two pillars, the sole remnants 
of a ruined building. 

But the most interesting of all the remains on the slopes of 
the Acropolis is that of the temple of Bacchus — the great 
tragic theatre of Athens. This theatre is said to have held 
30,000 spectators, a statement, however, to which it is difficult 
to give credence. Some remains still exist of its steps hewn 
in the rock at the southern side of the Acropolis ; but the Pen- 
telic marble with which its seats were covered has disappeared, 
like the countless statues with which it was decorated. Ranged 
along those stone seats the Athenians witnessed the tragedies 
of Sophocles and ^schylus, performed with all the solemnities 
of a grave religious ceremonial ; while incense ascended from 
the altar of Bacchus, the Lord of the Passions and the inspirer 
of tragic song. If their eyes wandered, it was to a scene which 
had been the theatre of events more glorious than any connected 
with the fated house of Atreus or of Labdacus. Before them 
lay their own element, the sea, encircling Egina, and Salamis 
fatal to Xerxes. Even such remembrances are not always 
attended with triumph. In that theatre, the day that the Pelo- 



OF GREECE AND TURKEY. 69 

ponnesian war was concluded by the complete submission of the 
Atheuians, when Lysander had demolished the fortifications 
which Themistocles had erected, the Athenian people witnessed 
the Electra of Euripides. That day was the anniversary of the 
battle of Salamis, won seventy-six years before, and had ever 
been kept as a chief festival. The contrast between the glory 
of Agamemnon, who alone had ruled the hosts of united Greece, 
and the exile of his orphan daughter, suddenly struck the 
Athenians as paralleled only by their own fate — ^and the au- 
dience melted into tears. Of all the spectacles which the 
Temple of Bacchus witnessed, that must surely have been 
the most pathetic. To the stranger visiting the spot, the 
remembrance is perhaps the most salutary moral connected 
with the Grreek drama. He needs such an admonition, for at 
Athens even the stranger is proud. 

Leaving the temple of Bacchus, I resolved to ascend the 
Acropolis once more, before the shades of evening closed around 
it. I had looked on it, in all docility and submission, as it is ; 
and I should have been glad to have seen it (might imagination 
but carry one so far) as it once was. As I advanced from that 
tragic theatre I endeavored to people once more the slopes of 
the Acropolis with that marvelous array of buildings which 
covered them in old time, cresting every prominent part of a 
rock the base of which cannot measure less than 2000 feet by 
1000. In that glorious array stood many a building devoted 
to public business, or pleasure: temples, altars, and Choragic 
monuments, that is to say, pillars or small temples, crowned 
with the tripod which was dedicated to Bacchus by each 
Athenian citizen who had at his own cost maintained a chorus 
to which the prize had been adjudged. A street lined with 
these trophies and votive offerings had once borne the name of 
the street of tripods. The only memorial of it that remains is 



70 PICTURESQUE SKETCHES 

that beautiful little building usually called the lantern of De- 
mosthenes, but in reality a Choragic monument. 

Having completed the ascent, I walked once more from one 
end of the Acropolis to the other, in my imagination restoring 
the ruins, and endeavoring to see all things as Pericles saw 
them, perhaps the day before the pestilence set in at Athens. 
What a spectacle must that have been, and what a time to be 
the leader of a people I At least six temples once stood on that 
sacred platform besides those which we now behold. In the 
midst of them were ranged innumerable altars, tripods, and 
historic monuments. Pausanias tells us that in his day there 
remained three thousand statues, after Nero had carried off as 
many as he needed for the adornment of that " Golden House" 
which princes trembled to enter. All round the platform on 
which these temples stood, and girdling it with their mythic 
and historic zone of marble, ran the Cyclopean walls that 
guarded the sacred temenos. Those walls were carved in relief, 
with sculptures, the designs of Phidias, representing the Griant 
Wars, the battle of the Amazons, the achievements of the great 
national hero, Theseus, and the records that belonged to the 
legendary age of Athens ; that age in which her historic glories 
still lay fermenting and undeveloped in her bosom, and from 
the memory of which the Athenian ever gained fresh inspira- 
tion. Above all, there in the centre stood the Parthenon, 
itself the embodied image and statue of perfect majesty. On 
its eastern front hung those golden shields (the traces of which 
still remain) which caught, every morning, the light of the 
rising sun; and beside it stood the statue of Minerva Proma- 
chos, seventy feet in height, the tutelary genius of Athens, 
gazing far off over the subject sea, and sustaining a spear, the 
g6lden summit of which, like the crest of her helmet, was seen 
by ships doubling the promontory of Sunium. 

The Acropolis itself hardly interested me more than the 



OF GREECE AND TURKEY. 71 

views which extended thence before me from every part of its 
boundary. Imn;iediately below lay the city with all its beauti- 
ful ruins. Beyond it spread some gracefully moulded hills, one 
only of which — Lycabettus, or the '4iill of light/^ which is 
higher than the Acropolis — reaches any considerable elevation. 
The rest are just lofty enough to give importance to a temple, 
or to be crowned by a, legend. They are sufl&cient to attract 
the attention, and to prompt the imagination, without engross- 
ing either. How well such a situation suited the artistic cha- 
racter of the Athenian mind ; and how much the better because 
nothing in the immediate neighborhood was imposing enough 
to absorb that mind, or to control it ! Athens was the king- 
dom of Art, not of Nature : Nature is there but the foundation 
of Art, while Art is the adornment and completion of Nature, 
who receives more than she gives, and is content with her por- 
tion. The green mound on which the Temple of Theseus stands 
would be nothing if it did not lift that temple into purer light ; 
and the rock of the Areopagus was not lofty enough to dwarf 
the dignity of the court installed upon it. On the summit of 
Lycabettus the Athenians built nothing. We can easily guess 
the reason of this. It is too sharp to afford a majestic founda- 
tion, and so high that the temple raised on it would not have 
been distinctly seen. The Romans, in their earlier and more 
religious days, would have crowned that hill with a Fane dedi- 
cated to Jupiter Optimus Maximus, and consulted the auguries 
thence, at the commencement of each new war. In their de- 
cline, an emperor would have surmounted it with his own 
statue cast in gold. The Egyptians would have hewn it into a 
pyramid, and made its shadow an allegory. In modern Italy 
it would have been hollowed into a cell for a hermit, who some 
centuries ago would have knelt there, telling his beads by the 
light of a setting moon; and in later times would have enjoyed 
there his noontide siesta, and kept a charitable flask of "Vir- 



72 PICTURESQUE SKETCHES 

gin's lac" for the benefit of dusty travelers. The English 
would have planted a windmill on it — urged by that impulse 
which compels nations to illustrate their character by the works 
of their handS; and often to leave in those works a caricature of 
their own moral features. 

And yetj on their small scale, nothing can be more exquisitely 
lovely in shape than the hills immediately around Athens, ena- 
meled as they are in spring with a profusion of flowers not always 
to be found at that season in the trim pleasure-grounds of less 
favored lands. The longer I looked on those hills, the finer 
seemed their infinite sweetness of outline. Farther ofi", the 
objects which met my eye were noble in character; on one side 
extended Hymettus, on the other Parnes, between and beyond 
both, Pentelicus. So regular in outline are the long level 
ranges of these mountains (formed as if for the winds to run 
races on them), that, notwithstanding their size, the impression 
they convey is not one of mountain wildness, but of serene ele- 
vation, placid strength, and severe majesty. On the south lies 
the sea, so distant that you see it only in its calm expanse, and 
yet so near that it loses nothing of the purple light which flashes 
from its ripple or streams along its tides. 

The Acropolis strikes the key-note of all the visual harmo- 
nies around it, and interprets all things, from the palm-tree 
that waves its plumes beside Athenian walls, to the blue horizon 
of the sea, and the snowy mountain. It was when I looked 
beyond it that I understood it. In name it was a religious 
sanctuary; in original intention a citadel; but in essential cha- 
racter it was a giant altar, and the divinity served there was 
the Spirit of Beauty — the spirit that created G-reek mythology, 
that inspired Glreek poetry, that organized Greek society, that 
methodized Greek philosophy, and that has preserved from 
confusion and corruption the complex tissue of Greek history. 
On that altar, and in honor of that divinity, temples themselves 



OF GREECE AND TURKEY. 73 

were offered as sacrificial gifts, and witli them whatever else the 
Athenians esteemed of highest worth, the works of their chief 
artists, the monuments of their bravest actions, the statues and 
the trophies of their greatest men. This worship of Beauty, 
indeed, aspired to be, and believed that it was, something more 
and higher; if it had not so aspired, it never, never would have 
been as high a thing as it became. To have been called " a 
nation of artists and slaves" would have been as repugnant to 
the Athenians in the former as in the latter count of the in- 
dictment. They were no race of connoisseurs or amateurs, 
substituting virtii for virtue, prating of art and antiquity, and 
governed by Punchinello and the foreigner. They built to their 
gods. Had they been mere devotees of Art they might have 
aspired to build, but assuredly the heavy masses of the Parthe- 
non would never have toiled up the rugged ascent of the Acro- 
polis. Not only did they build to their gods, but they built 
especially to the severer and the more venerable among them; 
and most remarkable is it that, while Beauty was their real 
inspiration, no temple rose on the Acropolis to the Groddess of 
Beauty. It is thus that in the region of moral, as of physical 
things, the centre of gravity is an impalpable point, and that 
the focus round which our thoughts, even the most eccentric of 
them, revolve in their orbits, while its position may be inferred 
by a scientific process, remains unrevealed to the eye. 

The Athenians have by some been called the most religious 
of the Grreek nations; I have often doubted whether they were 
not the least so ; but there is a sense in which the two positions 
will not be at variance. They were the most spiritual in ima- 
gination, because they possessed the widest and most soaring 
imagination; but their heart was too vagrant to be religious, 
and their will was not strong enough for that most aspiring and 
most sustained of the energies. They were liberal in the ad- 
mission of divinities, but lax in obedience to them — never, 
7 



74 PICTURESQUE SKETCHES 

perhaps, were a people on such easy terms with their gods. 
In worship they were assiduous; indeed, they thought they 
never could see too much of their gods; and that the rather 
because the more they saw of them the more they could talk 
them over, as they supposed, getting at once what they de- 
sired, and escaping what they feared. Their type in this 
respect might have been the infant Mercury, who stole the 
lyre of Apollo, and hid away the thunderbolt of Jove, with 
the aid of ingenuity, loquacity, and a graceful impudence. 
Between the rival divinities they divided the prize; they gave 
to Minerva their imagination, and to Venus their heart; 
and where they felt least they were most eloquent in dis- 
course. Yet, in their earlier period, they must have been real- 
ly religious. The religious affections have frequently cooled 
down before the costliest offerings have been laid on the altars 
of religion, and great temples have been, perhaps, not more 
often the expression of an existing devotion than the monu- 
ments of a faith in process of congelation. The most religious 
period of the Athenian nation, I have little doubt, had long 
preceded the period of its greatest glory, though but for the 
former the latter would never have existed; and the goddess of 
Wisdom and Chastity had probably been worshiped with a 
simpler and more fervent devotion in the old temple which the 
Persians burned, than ever she was in the Parthenon. Not- 
withstanding, if beauty was the secret inspiration, at least it 
was not the recognized aim of the Athenian mind; Art exer- 
cised a wider sway than she claimed ; she was too higli still to 
be her own object; she was contented to walk "among the 
honorable women" that followed in the train of a mightier po- 
tentate, and to this religious aspiration she owed her most 
enduring triumphs. 

The poets tell us that nature alone is permanent, while the 
works of human hand moulder into oblivion. It is not alto- 



OF GREECE AND TURKEY. 75 

getbcr so ; the Temple of Victory rises again out of its dust, 
and the Parthenon still opposes its broad brow to the wasting 
winds of time, while rivers have been dried up, and fruitful 
lands have become a wilderness. It was thus that I mused on 
the Acropolis, when my attention was caught by a faint suf- 
fusion thrown on a white and prostrate pillar near that against 
which I leaned: I turned, and saw through a long range of, 
columns the setting sun which had dropped from its vapory 
veil a moment before it was to disappear. Swiftly as the pro- 
gress of some mastering minstrelsy the splendor leaped from 
cloud to cloud, and lit up the illumination of the west; in a 
few minutes more the east returned it like an echo; the sea 
burned, and seemed to shake beneath the dark fire; and the 
far mountain ridges, virginally robed in winter snow, became 
crimson first, and then seemed to grow almost transparent with 
the increasing light : infinitude beyond infinitude of pacific 
glory opened out before me in the heavens, as cloud responded 
to cloud, and the sacred communion spread throughout the fir- 
mament. It was the same glorious and triumphant spectacle, 
a foretaste, surely, of something higher than men can as yet 
know or desire, which the great luminary had exhibited before 
the eyes of successive generations, from the time that " Earth 
beheld it first on the fourth day;" and it will be repeated 
without speck, flaw, or imperfection, till the day of judgment. 



76 PICTURESQUE SKETCHES 



CHAPTEE V. 

ATHENS. 

Temple of Jupiter 0]ympius — Practical benefit resulting from great na- 
tional monuments — The Ilissus — A rural festival near Athens. 

The morning after tliat of my arrival at Athens, I was awak- 
ened at an early hour by a loud^ unceremonious; hut by no 
means unmusical, laugh at my bedside. In Grecian air one 
wakes lightly and at once ; I had, therefore, no difficulty in recog- 
nizing our faithful guide Elias, though he tossed his head 
higher than ever, flung his raven locks further back over his 
shoulders, and was attired with a degree of splendor that threw 
into the shade even the glittering apparition which had greeted 
me first at Patras. I must not attempt a description of his 
attire — suffice it to say that it was in shape the ordinary 
Greek costume, but that it was tricked out in the most bril- 
liant and at the same time harmonious colors, and was as thick 
set with silver and gold as Persian poetry is with metaphors. 
He gave me time to wonder at him, and then broke forth 
with his usual volubility, or rather with much more; for, sleep- 
ing like a dog whenever he had nothing to amuse him, he had 
laid in, during our voyage, a store of repose which probably 
served him for a week. " You sleep always — toujours — though 
the sun soon up. I bring you very safe here — all safe with 
me — comfortable — no robbers — I walk this one hour — people 
wonder at my dress — people whisper — ask much questions-— 
people much pleased.'^ I told him that he was in all respects 



OF GREECE AND TURKEY. 77 

admirable, and that I was going to get up. " Yes/' said he, 
as he departed ; " you get up— much haste. You see Teseo — ■ 
you see many temples— all very fine at Atene — I order break- 
fast — cook fear me — you eat Hymettus — -honey very good — 
plenty — plenty!'^ 

And even so it turned out; never surely was there such 
honey as that of Hymettus, so pure, so fresh, so fragrant, the 
essence of all flowers; to eat it seemed rather a poetic enjoy- 
ment than a corporeal act, especially when one remembered in 
how many an old song it had been celebrated. Notwithstand- 
ing, I did not prolong my meal sufficiently to devour its parent 
Hymettus, for I was as eager to see as Elias was to be seen. 
The Acropolis I had visited; but the rest of the city remained 
unexplored. And yet I would rather never have seen Athens 
than see it with the eyes of those travelers who literally run 
and read. Everything in Athens ma^, indeed, be seen in two 
days; but it is only when we have grown intimate with its 
precious relics that they begin to talk to us familiarly about 
themselves, their histories and their recollections. They detect 
at once an abstracted, an egotistic, or a restless mood, and lock 
their lips. Neither are they communicative to one who rushes 
greedily upon the feast spread before him. To observe and 
enjoy in travel, nothing is needed more than moral temperance. 
A man should never devote himself exclusively to the new ob- 
jects around him. He should read his old books and think his 
old thoughts, and preserve the continuity between the present 
and the past; for otherwise he retains no standard by which he 
can measure new impressions, and they flit past him like objects 
in a dream. Mentally to assimilate the old stock must bear a 
large proportion to the new graft, which, without a congenial 
support, will not grow, and in any case will only grow at its 
leisure. Let a man, instead of launching upon a sea without 
a chart when he visits a new region, throw himself back from 

7* 



78 PICTURESQUE SKETCHES 

time to time into old associations^ until he feels as if he were 
at home: he will then, when he sallies forth to see some par- 
ticular object of interest, appreciate it with as fresh a satisfac- 
tion as if, while he was musing on the matter by his own fire- 
side, a bird of the air had carried him aloft and placed him 
beside the object of his curiosity. 

- One of my favorite haunts while at Athens was the temple 
of Jupiter Olympius, the largest fane ever raised to that di- 
vinity. Even the Athenians, with all their energy, were not 
able to pile up those vast masses of marble in a less period than 
that of six hundred years. The temple was founded by Peisis- 
tratus, and is sufficient in itself to prove that he was not wholly 
unworthy of a throne. Its design is worthy of him to whom 
the world is indebted for the preservation of the works of Ho- 
mer. How often must those around him have laughed at an 
undertaking which, as they doubtless believed, could never be 
completed! Peisistratus knew better; and if the '^tyrant" 
could have foreseen that the mighty fane was to owe its com- 
pletion to another absolute sovereign, regarded, no doubt, by 
the Athenians as an usurper like himself, he might have de- 
rived an argument in favor of monarchy from the power for 
good as well as for evil, which a concentration of national re- 
sources and an unquestioned will impart. So proud of his 
achievement was the Emperor Adrian, who completed this 
wonder of the world, that he called by his name the portion of 
Athens in which it stood. Of its hundred and twenty pillars, 
seventeen only remain; and it is singular that, like many Greek 
temples, the rest owed their destruction to the circumstance 
which promised them immortality. Had they consisted of the 
soft tufo that abounds all over southern Italy, or of that porous 
and watery petrification of which the temples of Pestum were 
built, we should possess them still; but they were of Pentelican 
marble, and the Turks wanted lime for their fortifications. 



OP GREECE AND TURKEY. 79 

The lieiglit of these pillars is sixty feet. So far apart do 
they stand that you look up to the vast marble beams (if one 
may so call them) that run from capital to capital, expecting to 
see them depressed in the centre, as a beam of timber would 
be under the like circumstances. These pillars retain a white- 
ness such as a London chimney-piece would in vain emulate, 
and stand up bravely, prepared to encounter the adversities of 
another thousand years, undefaced and perfect, though centu- 
ries had passed over them " before the first of Druids was a 
child/' My favorite time for visiting this noble brotherhood 
was when the full moon shone upon their shafts, and the night 
wind sighed through the foliage of their intricate Corinthian 
capitals. Beautiful as is the effect of moonlight on a Gothic 
ruin, it is perhaps yet more satisfactory on a Grecian ; for the 
long and polished cornice glitters like silver in its beam, and 
the tall pillars fling their black shadows far away — shadows 
more simple, more massive, and sharply defined than those cast 
down from Gothic tracery. When I speak of moonlight, how- 
ever, I refer to the moon of the south, which fills half the 
heavens with light before its disk begins to peer above the 
horizon. 

What is to be the fate of this temple, no small part of which 
has already stood during nearly half the period that has elapsed 
since the creation of man ? Further ruin would seem impos- 
sible unless occasioned by an earthquake, or another irruption 
'of fanatics; for mere barbarians would wage war against it as 
vainly as against its parent Pentelicus. What if its destinies be 
yet unaccomplished, and if it should once more lift up its head 
and wear a crown never yet accorded to it? More wonderful 
things have happened. Six hundred years were necessary for 
its completion; why should not the labor of rebuilding it, if 
the cost be too heavy for the energies of a young nation, be 
distributed over six hundred years more? Peisistratus knew, 



80 PICTURESQUE SKETCHES 

what was yet better known to the men who founded the cathe- 
drals of medio3val Europe, that such labors are no unprofitable 
burthens, as they afifect the nations that undertake them. They 
bind together remote generations; they are the golden cord on 
which high aspirations and generous efforts in successive years 
are strung and garlanded; they give continuity to a nation, and 
impersonate its history. In consecrating the present to the 
future, they call in the future to the support of the present. 
Individuals and nations alike are strengthened in hours of weak» 
ness by whatever confirms their faith in that high destiny which 
lies before them. Their end cannot yet become, they say, for 
there is yet work to be done. Michael Angelo, when asked 
why he had never married, answered that he had never had 
time; until his picture of the "Last Judgment'^ was finished, 
perhaps, he would not have found time to die. 

When Thrasybulus led his seven hundred warriors to Athens 
on an enterprise that seemed all but hopeless, and recovered 
the city from the grasp of the " thirty tyrants," may he not 
have pointed the attention of the respondent to the Olympian 
pillars, when first in sight of his advancing band, and said, 
"The greatness of Athens over! why, it is but begun!'' If I 
were King Otho, and not in debt, I would proclaim the Olym- 
pian Temple the metropolitan cathedral of Greece; I would lay 
another foundation-stone, and say, "If we raise a pillar or half 
a pillar each year, it is enough; a few centuries will complete 
the work.V The country would not be the poorer and might 
be greatly the richer for spending a thousand pounds per an- 
num, if it could afford no more, on the work. The Temple, 
moreover, would be one day completed, if it be the intention of 
Providence to build up again a Greek nation. After an inter- 
val of two hundred years, a use has been found for the crane so 
wisely left on the half-raised tower of Cologne. Great enter- 
prises have a better chance of success than petty, for they evoke 



or GREECE AND TURKEY. 81 

a great spirit and summon great allies to their support. They 
require, moreover, a sound foundation; and that in itself is 
half the work. A good plan and a good intention supply the 
other half. 

Close to the Temple of Jupiter is the Ilissus — perhaps one 
should rather say, is the bed of the Ilissus; for, in dry weather 
at least, the stream is scantily fed. If there was as little water 
in it in old times, the fair captive who descended to its reedy 
brink, steadying the pitcher on her head, must have had even 
more cause to complain than the matron who led the captive 
choTus in the Hecuba. Lapsing from the rocky steeps of Hy- 
mettus, the slender rill winds past the site where in the time of 
Aristotle the Lyceum sheltered his disciples in its groves. Not 
a vestige of the Lyceum remains; and the temple dedicated to 
the Ilissian Muses has also disappeared. Trickling on in a 
southerly direction, the Ilissus tends toward the sea, but does 
not reach, and apparently never reached it. Like the Cephi- 
sus, which flows also toward the sea, passing at the other side 
of Athens, it is swallowed up before it reaches its destination, 
not in sandy deserts, but in thymy hollows, flowery knots, and 
caverns of a tempting coolness. A lover of Greek mythology 
— one who not only detected its mystic wisdom, the purity of 
its source, and the latent spirituality of its aim, but who also 
appreciated its deficiencies and its insufficiency — might easily 
find in these two classic streams an apt emblem of that mytho- 
logy, and generally of the imagination itself in its weakness and 
its strength. The fable or the myth, he might say, tends ever 
to the truth, but never attains it; for its course is erratic, and 
it dallies with every trifle that it passes. If you mount an 
eminence, and observe its direction, you discover indeed whither 
it was drawn by the law of its nature, and what destination it 
would have reached if its source had been higher on the mount- 
ain, and if its impulse had been mightier. To profit by its 



82 PICTURESQUE SKETCHES 

index, however, you must abandon its wanderings; as well be 
stifled in the sands as in flowers — in sordid cares as in sensuous 
illusions. There is thus a moral, it seems, not only in '^ run- 
ning brooks,^' but in brooks that can run no more; and even 
the northern traveler in G-reece finds it difficult to avoid in- 
dulging in that moral and figurative interpretation of nature in 
which the Grreek mind found its perpetual pastime. 

In the neighborhood of the Ilissus, I was present at a 
festival, probably not unlike many which that streani witnessed 
three thousand years ago. Its ofiice was to celebrate the be- 
ginning of Lent, or rather, perhaps, it should be regarded as 
the closing scene of the Carnival, which was impersonated in 
the form of an old man, and decapitated, amid many character- 
istic solemnities, at the Temple of Jupiter Olympius. Nearly 
all the inhabitants of Athens were present, from the oldest to 
the youngest, and joined in the jubilee with a sort of fierce and 
impassioned merriment, such as left an Italian festa far behind, 
and suggested to me the revels which had in old time wakened 
the echoes of 

" Old Bacchic Nysa, Msenad-haunted mountain." 

The king and queen rode about, with a placidity truly Teu- 
tonic, amid groups of peasantry who seldom interrupted their 
sports for a moment on the approach of the royal pair. They 
did not even take ofi" their red caps, a want of good breeding 
which I was sorry to observe ; though a few of the nearest 
pressed the right hand against the breast, and made the pro- 
found and dignified oriental bow. The rest danced around in 
circles — the men with the men, and the women with the 
women, and exhibited in the winged movements, not only of 
their flexile limbs but of the whole body, a combination of 
native grace and wild enthusiasm such as can be paralleled 
alone by the dances depicted on an Etruscan vase. Never 



OF GREECE AND TURKEY. 83 

before was I so much impressed with the lamentable loss we 
westerns have sustained in the substitution of our hideous, un- 
meaning, sordid, and doleful costume for one on which the eye 
can always rest with pleasure and, where numbers are as- 
sembled, with delight. The Grreeks, who are wholly indifferent 
to comfort — as we should probably be if we retained anything 
like their youthful elasticity and purity of bodily health- — not 
only attach great importance to dress, but display a taste in the 
arrangement of it, and wear it with a grace which adds to the 
brilliant beauty of such an attire as theirs. On this occasion 
every one put forth his best. The upper part of the body was 
covered with a tight vest embroidered with gold; under that 
fluttered a white kilt or petticoat reaching the knee ; lower 
down were leggings of every color in the rainbow, and scarlet 
shoes. The grave lavender-colored slopes were empurpled as 
the revelry swept over them ; and, like the steed which glories 
in its rider, inanimate Nature seemed to catch the animation 
of her beautiful children. 

In the midst of the dancers were numberless companies of 
peasants, seated around their rural feast. Each group had its 
thick and many-colored carpet, on which the guests placed 
themselves, cross-legged, in a circle, and eat, as Homer says, 
^^ until their hearts were satisfied." Homeric shouts of " in- 
extinguishable laughter" rose up also among them from time to 
time ; and many a trick was exhibited, and many a wild prank 
played, but without any admixture of vulgarity. Along the 
field, and about the tufted banks of the Ilissus, horsemen gal- 
loped with a fury altogether indescribable. Sometimes they 
advanced in a troop, and suddenly breaking like a rocket, dis- 
persed, and scoured the plain in every direction. Sometimes a 
single horseman darted forward, like an arrow shot from a bow, 
and passed in front of the charging column, or thridded his way 
among its ranks with the skill of a skater who describes a figure 



84 PICTURESQUE SKETCHES 

of eight. They sat far back on their horses, as their forefathers 
sat, if we can trust the witness of ancient sculpture, and as the 
cavalry of the East sit to this day; their scarlet caps and 
golden tassels (often entangled in their long hair) gleaming in 
the sun, and their white kilts blown across the horse's shoulder 
or streaming behind. Often they flung javelins at each other, 
and that with such hearty good-will that the effort not seldom 
went near tossing them off their little white horses. Those 
horses had caught the madness of the hour ; and though no 
princess like Andromache had fed them with corn soaked in 
generous wine, they flashed past us with feet that hardly touched 
the ground, little sharp heads pointed into the air, and protrud- 
ing eyes; fleet as the wind, and so light and slender that a 
wind apparently might have blown them away. 

In the midst of all this riot, a gaunt old camel paced sedately 
and pensively with measured steps; now holding his level 
head as steadily on high as if he were pointing toward Mecca 
and the Prophet's tomb ; now discreetly inclining it, as one 
who takes gently whatever fortune comes, and browsing on the 
pink flowers (the silver-rod) which abound on the steeps of the 
Ilyssus. Besides this representation of the Ottoman Empire 
the ministers of all the European powers were present, as well 
as most of the travelers at Athens ; while numbers of ladies, 
English, German, Italian, and Greek, established themselves 
under the shadow of the Temple, a single pillar of which was 
large enough to protect a numerous group from the sun. From 
this tumultuous scene there were but two dissentients; the 
camel was one ; the other was a Scotchman, almost as un- 
worldly in his ways, and quite as simple-hearted and as in- 
different to opinion, who walked about with me, and whose 
considerate, learned, and benignant discourse I had had many 
opportunities of enjoying. He regarded the tumult with an 
alien eye, and with a covenanting rigidity bent his gaze in- 



OP GREECE AND TURKEY. 85 

flexibly before him, as we passed group after group of cliarging 
horsemen, to the no small danger of every bone in his body. 
More than once he stopped and placed his umbrella under his 
left arm, while he stuck the forefinger of an uncompromising 
right hand into the palm of the other, and stated to me that 
though decidedly, and on reflection, a liberal, he could not just 
quite see how a people so senseless and volatile could be safely 
trusted with that management of their own affairs so essential 
to their well being and to the nature of things — a very saga- 
cious question, which many years may leave unanswered. 
Pacific camels and steady Anglo-Saxons may safely be trusted with 
self-government, because, absorbed as they are in industrialism, 
they happen to want next to no government. The more fervid 
races of the south, when indulged in unbounded liberty, are like 
children cursed with an exemption from all control. The feast 
is no sooner finished than the indigestion begins. When the 
holiday is over and the music has died away, the revelers, who 
abandoned or destroyed their paternal dwelling, because no 
palace smaller than the illimitable firmament was worthy of 
their magnificent aspirations, are driven for refuge, by stress of 
weather, into some hollow tree or slimy cavern narrower than 
its smallest room. Despotism is demanded as a protection 
where lawful government was disowned; and national glory, in 
place of individual freedom, is called in to stay the heartburn 
of disappointed vanity. 



PICTURESQUE SKETCHES 



CHAPTEE VL 

ATHENS. 

AtlienS'*~The Stoa of Adrian- — The Gate of the Agora— The Monwrnenl 
of Philopappus — Stadium — Temple of Theseus — Temple of the 
Winds — The Lantern of Demosthenes—The Pnyx — The Prison of 
Socrates— The Religion of Socrates— The Areopagus. 

Among the buildings of a later date at Athens^ and pos- 
sessed of an interest historic rather than artistic^ is the Stoa of 
Adrian^ of which there still remain nine Corinthian pillars. 
Close by is the gate of the Agora, built also by Adrian, and in 
tolerably good preservation. Attached to it is a marble tablet 
covered with an inscription, which has turned out on examina- 
tion to be a list of prices and market regulations ! A record 
of this minute character puts us in mind of Herculaneum, and 
brings us more near to the Athenians, considered in connection 
with their daily life, than we are brought by their noblest 
works. Another monument of the same period is a building 
erected by Philopappus, a Syrian, to the memory of his father 
and grandfather, who had been kings in the East, until the 
Romans came and took away their place and name. It is 
situated on a hill opposite the Acropolis and of considerable 
height. Its remains are imposing in scale, and consist of white 
marble ; but they are of Roman architecture, and their arches, 
which rise tier above tier, as in the Colosseum, contrast unfa- 
vorably with the adjoining models of a purer age. The walls 
of this building sustain an alto-relievo, the figures of which are 



OF GREECE AND TURKEY. 87 

the size of life, and remain in good preservation ; but the in- 
spiration had gone by long before the well-meaning chisel was 
applied to the marble ', and if a Phidias had appeared at such 
a time, he could have probably effected but little, though 
seconded with all the patronage of an Adrian. 

It would be interesting to ascertain whether the Athenians 
resented the intrusion ; of the Roman architecture on their 
sacred soil, or applauded it. The latter I should guess to have 
been the fact. Nations, like individuals, are apt to grow tired 
of their best thoughts, especially if they have stumbled upon them 
early, instead of fighting their way to them by degrees, and 
prefer a lower class for the sake of variety. Senility, that is, 
age without its appropriate honors and virtues, must ever bab- 
ble, and national senility delights in the petty and the trivial. 
The ablest men in the time of G-eorge the Second, nay of Queen 
Anne, labored under the same " invincible ignorance'^ as the 
stupidest, with respect to G-othic architecture. When the 
Athenians had talked away all their wisdom, and had allowed 
valor and patriotism to be superseded by rhetoric and buffoonery, 
they may still have made their boast of the Parthenon ; but I 
suspect that the ascent to the summit of the Acropolis became 
irksome to them. Not many years have elapsed since the 
ascent to an eminence, almost as noble, and as richly stored 
with venerable monuments — the rock of Cashel — had become so 
toilsome, that Archbishop Price, compassionating the Sunday 
labors of his coach-horses, abandoned the glorious and time- 
honored cathedral on its summit, which at that time needed but 
some repairs to its roof, and has since fallen into ruin. No 
diminution either of zeal or of taste could ever among the 
Athenians have produced an analogous act of barbarism : but 
it is not improbable that under the specious pretence of com- 
prehensiveness or liberality, they were more than willing to 
tolerate the bad, as well as the good in Art ; and it was well 



88 PICTURESQUE SKETCHES 

that the Temple of Jupiter remained unfinished, and constrained 
them, as by a vow, to walk in the ancient ways. 

There remains one more memorial of a comparatively late 
period at Athens, and a very remarkable one. It is a Stadium, 
or long amphitheatre, constructed as a place for chariot-races 
and other games, and beautifully situated near the liissus. Its 
length is about eight hundred feet, and its shape is that of a 
long, narrow horse-shoe. Its marble seats have disappeared, 
but its form is so well preserved that it will doubtless be 
again used as a place of public assembly or public amusement. 
For this great work the Athenians were indebted to Herodes 
Atticus, as well as for the theatre under the Acropolis. 

Besides those ruins of which the names are preserved, you 
meet in most parts of Athens with immense fragments, thrown 
idly by in every court and garden, and half-formed street — 
massive walls, prostrate columns, broken capitals, and frag- 
ments of cornices. Seldom is a house built without the disco- 
very of such objects among its foundations. My friend Mr. F., 
while clearing the ground for his house, dug up no small quan- 
tity of sculpture also, the greater part of which he has inserted 
into his garden-wall, where it is well seen, and is safe from 
molestation. Some pieces of sculpture, quite equal to the ex- 
pectations formed, have been disinterred in Athens. For the 
most part they were placed, as soon as they saw the light, in 
the Temple of Theseus. Shall we ever send back the Elgin 
marbles ? and will the king of Bavaria one day restore those of 
Egina? Such acts of reparation may perhaps be made, if 
these works of art should ever be really appreciated in the 
countries which have appropriated rather than adopted them ; 
otherwise certainly not. So long as statues are regarded 
chiefly as matters of vanity, of course no nation will part with 
its spoils. 

Of such treasures the Theseum is not an unworthy receptacle. 



OF GREECE AND TURKEY. 89 

Its Pentelican pillars (six at each end, and thirteen at the side) 
have escaped the injuries of time and fortune better than any- 
other considerable building at Athens. A gentler destiny has 
attended what was a monument not only of Athenian glory^ but 
of — a rarer thing by far — Athenian penitence. The Athenians 
had banished Theseus to the island of Scyros^ where he died. No 
sooner had they returned from their own voluntary exile in that of 
Salamis, where they had taken refuge when the Persians held 
Athens, than they called to mind their great national hero, and 
made what atonement they could to him by bringing back his 
bones to the city of his care, and building a temple above them. 
Theseus was the mythic hero of the Athenians. With him 
began that heroic era which supplanted the patriarchal age of 
their hereditary kings. To him it was that they owed their 
popular institutions. It was he who united into one nation the 
twelve independent races that inhabited the twelve plains of 
Attica, constituting Athens the metropolis of all, and com- 
memorating, while he confirmed, their union by the Panathenaic 
festival. 

The stranger at Athens is sometimes pleasurably, sometimes 
painfully impressed by contending objects of interest, new 
and old. Surrounded by antiquities, he is surrounded also 
by all the signs of progress. But twelve houses remained 
in Athens at the conclusion of the war. It is now a flou- 
rishing city. You turn in one direction, and see the temple 
of Theseus; in another, and your eye rests on the military 
hospital in which some of the patriots wounded during the 
war of independence have found a home. You contemplate 
the memorials of Adrian, and the palace of a modern potentate 
claims your attention at the same moment. It is a melancholy 
reflection that as the new city increases the ancient monuments 
will become more and more eclipsed. What would the Temple 
of the Winds or even that of Theseus be if buried in miles of 

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90 PICTURESQUE SKETCHES 

streets^ alleys^ and squares ? From sucli profanation the Acro- 
polis alone is secure; and even of that the summit only; for it 
is hard to say to what extent that noble rock may not be injured 
if houses are allowed to creep up its lower slopes. There is 
nothing, however grand, which the hand of man is not compe- 
tent to spoil : witness the deplorable injury done to the Calton 
hill at Edinburgh by that barbarism, the Nelson monument^ 
the height of which dwarfs everything in the neighborhood. 
The Acropolis, indeed, is far from being improved by the Nor- 
man tower which rises among its garland of temples; but that 
solitary monument of an important historical era is, notwith- 
standing, deserving of respect. 

And yet the sound of the chisel once more in Athens is a 
cheering sound. In the invigorating air of Greece everything 
that speaks of progress is attended with hope, for there de- 
spondency cannot exist. With little reason for the expectation, 
I could not help fancying, while within the enchanted circle, 
that something great was again to arise on Athenian soil. With 
what feelings then must not the men of old have labored, when 
the works on which they toiled were the Parthenon and the 
Olympian Temple, and when the world had not yet become 
covered with ruins? They must have thought that every stone 
they lodged in its bed was laid there for all time. How must 
not hope have led to hope, and dream to dream ! ' A century 
had covered the Acropolis with temples — why should not an- 
other century cover the lower slopes of the Lycabettus ? Sunium 
already boasted its fane. How many a promontory of Parnes 
and Hymettus, jutting forth into its green sea of Arbutus and 
Ilex, must not have seemed to them to await a consecration from 
which the Sun-god could seldom withhold an approving glance. 
Of all builders, perhaps of all men, they must have been the 
happiest. They did not know how lightly Time regards his 
noblest work; they had read little of history. Those who 



OF GREECE AND TURKEY. 01 

know as much of it as we do, little as that may be, will per- 
haps bequeath it hut few materials in future. No doubt the 
Athenians were presumptuous; but not to have been so they 
must have been saints. 

Athens is not entirely dependent on its ancient monuments 
for historic interest. It contains specimens of the Byzantine 
architecture in some churches, which, though small, struck me 
as very beautiful. It is unfortunate that their detestation of 
the Turks impelled the Athenians to pull down all the minarets, 
a few of which would have added much to the characteristic 
expression of the modern city. I wish also that some more of 
their palms remained : one only of all that Athens once pos- 
sessed could I discover, and from whatever point of view it was 
seen, its slender column, scaled, not fluted, and the arching 
crown of its branches, added grace to the objects around. 
Even in the distant landscape you detect but few palms : a 
landscape ever varied and ever beautiful, of which you catch 
fair glimpses, as you look down the vistas of new streets in a 
city not yet overgrown. Many of these streets are, at their 
further end, not yet dismantled of the green sod; and the 
wind which rushes up them wafts you the smell of flowers, not 
of smoke. 

The Greek costume added infinitely, I thought, to the cha- 
racteristic expression of the city, and compensated in some 
measure for the deficient beauty of the women. The children, 
with their black, flashing eyes and muse-like foreheads, possess 
an extraordinary degree of loveliness; bjit among the women 
of Athens beauty is not a frequent gift, although, where met, 
it is beauty of the highest and most intellectual order. On the 
other hand,-Grreek women have a naive frankness and simplicity 

that is very charming. "Do you like Madame as much 

as all the world seems to do ?" I asked one of them, at a large 
party. "I not like her much," was the answer; "what for her 



92 PICTURESQUE SKETCHES 

beauty to me? I not a man. I much not like her, for she never 
ask me to her house." Many misunderstandings, at least 
among us^ would be prevented if people spoke as frankly. 

If you wish to have a complete conception of Athens you 
must throw in, of course, some of the usual vulgarities of a 
metropolis — cafes, restaurants, a theatre, and hotels. I am 
sorry to say, also, that as you walk in the streets your ear is 
too often saluted by the sound of billiard balls or the rattling 
of dice. Among its drawbacks is to be included that universal 
nuisance, the all-seeing English traveler— the traveler of that 
class, I mean (for to no nation do more intelligent travelers 
belong also) who scribble their names on the walls of temples, 
write witty criticisms in the strangers' book at inns, are always 
paying too much, and raving about extortion, depreciate every- 
thing that is not like what they are used to, swallow an infinite 
quantity of dust, and return home with as much knowledge and 
worse morals than they took with them. In the small circle of 
Athens these gentry are more in your way than in the Brightens 
and Cheltenhams of the Continent. One of them observed to 
a friend of mine : " What liars those Greeks are, and what fools, 
too, to fancy they can persuade that they defeated the Persians at 
Marathon, when we know that it was the Turks that fought 
there, and d — d badly did they fight !'^ Another, who joined 
me sometimes on the Acropolis, passed his time there chiefly in 
prophesying concerning his dinner. To stamp impressions of 
the beautiful upon natures as coarse as these would be as futile 
an endeavor as that of writing love-letters on sand-paper. Ano- 
ther, of the same class, who was much troubled with hypochon- 
dria, made me look attentively in his face whenever we met, 
and tell him how he seemed. Once only did I observe a gleam 
of satisfaction on his face ; it was when I pointed out to him a 
shop door over which was written in large letters, " English 
medicines sold here." We entered the shop together, but I 



or GREECE AND TURKEY. 93 

fear he did not buy what he wanted, for during several days 
after he suffered so much from sickness of stomach as to be un- 
able to leave his room. 

It is a fortunate circumstance that among the monuments of 
antiquity which have escaped the spoiler's hand, at Athens, 
are some of a character so singular that if they had perished 
(and a touch might have destroyed them) nothing would have 
remained to give us an idea of what they had been. One of 
these is the ''Lantern of Demosthenes;'^ another is the well- 
known " Temple of the Winds," a small octagon tower of 
exquisite proportions, the alternate sides of which are graced 
with projecting porches supported by pillars, while aloft the 
eight Winds expand their wings, floating forward with refluent 
hair, and holding in their hands the urns of benignant dews 
and showery influences, by which the seasons are tempered to 
the use of man. This building, which contained a water-clock 
in communication with the fountain Clepsydra, was originally 
surmounted by a Triton revolving on an axis, and sustaining 
in his hand a wand, the point of which drooped over the em- 
blem of whatever wind was blowing at the time. On the side 
of the building still remain the lines which, like those traced 
on our dials, marked the hour by the shadow cast from the 
styles above. This building is a beautiful instance of that 
architectural tact which turns every practical need to account j 
it would be a dangerous model, however, in the hands of a 
copyist, for the least alteration in its proportions would proba- 
bly spoil its effect, and the slightest misapplication would 
make it ridiculous. One can hardly hope that it has hitherto 
escaped being travestied : if, indeed, it has ever been made to 
surmount a Greek portico, and do service as the spire of a meet- 
ing-house, there has, at least, been a moral significance in this 
application of the Temple of the Winds. 

But of all the monuments at Athens I have little doubt that 



94 PICTURESQUE SKETCHES 

the one whicli most strongly stirs the spirit of an Athenian 
youth is that of the Pnyx^ or place of public assembly, in 
which the people deliberated on matters of state. Time has 
done no injury here, for the hand of man had done little to 
embellish what nature had shaped, and patriotic zeal had ren- 
dered memorable ; the Athenians took counsel in the open air; 
the vault of a Grreecian heaven was their roof; the walls of their 
parliament house were the mountains that protected their land, 
and its ornaments were the temples of their gods and the trophies 
of their heroes, nearly all of which were visible from the spot. 
Among the green hills to the west of the Acropolis, and dis- 
tant from it about a quarter of a mile, extends a long semicir- 
cular wall of solid rock, made regular by the chisel, the lower 
tier of which consists of vast blocks, apparently brought to the 
spot by human labor, and fitted to each other. One of these, 
which I measured, is nine feet square ; another is twelve feet 
by eight, and proportionally thick. This semicircular enclo- 
sure is the place of assembly ; in the centre of the natural wall 
is a range of rude steps, surmounted by the Bema of the orator. 
It was on that pedestal that Demosthenes stood when he sent 
forth that voice which silenced every other in Athens, and 
shook the throne of Macedon. 

Dr. Wordsworth, in his delightful book on Grreece, attaches 
a high moral and political importance to the fact that the orator 
standing on the. Pnys was confronted by the monuments of his 
country. The following is one of the many eloquent passages 
in his work, a work not only abounding in learning, but in a 
poetic discernment which attests the right of the author to the 
illustrious name he bears— -^^ Not to their natural genius alone, 
though in that they stood pre-eminent; not to rules of Art, 
though ingeniously contrived and elaborately studied ; not to 
frequency of rhetorical exercises, nor to the skill of their 
teachers, though they were well disciplined by both ; nor yet 



OF GREECE ANB TURKEY. 95 

to the sagacity of the audience, though in that they enjoyed a 
high privilege, was Athens indebted for the piercing eloquence of 
Pericles and the resistless impetuosity of Demosthenes ; but also, 
and especially, to these objects, which elevated their thoughts, 
moved their affections, and fired their imagination, as they 
stood upon this spot. The school of Athenian oratory was the 
Pnyx." Closely analogous to this reasoning is one of the argu- 
ments on which Grattan laid most stress, when resisting the 
Legislative Union between Great Britain and Ireland. As one 
swallow does not make a summer, so one argument does not 
decide a large question ; but in his statement there was 
assuredly something more than eloquence. Yery different, 
apparently, was the bearing of Athenian statesmen at the Pnyx 
and at the court of Philip, where they could no longer believe 
in themselves, where they contemplated their country's interests 
from a different point of view, and, therefore, in a different 
perspective, and where, with so much dust thrown in their 
eyes, it was hard to keep a little gold-dust out of their pockets. 
Among the green knolls to the west of the Acropolis there 
is one object of an interest not less deep than that of the Pnyx, 
if the legend which hallows it may be trusted. Many of the 
stony hills are excavated into caves, supposed to have been 
sepulchral chambers which resemble the Indian rock-temples, 
and probably belong to that early period in which the Athenian 
race retained much of their oriental character. The original 
destination of these caves is a matter as uncertain as that of 
the catacombs of Rome and Naples, cities which have never 
ceased to be inhabited from the time that the excavations 
were made, and which yet can render as little account of them 
as man can give of much that lies at the foundations of his 
moral and social existence. One of these caves preserves the 
memory, if not of its original purpose, at least of its most me- 
morable application, and is called the ^^ prison of Socrates." 



96 PICTURESQUE SKETCHES 

It consists of three dark chambers^ opening into each other, the 
last of which communicates with the open air by means of a 
sort of tunnel wrought through the rock, and issuing into light 
at the summit of the hill. The philosopher, from whose capa- 
cious soul proceeded the speculative philosophy of a Plato, and 
the practical philosophy of a Xenophon, as the Parthenon and 
the Propylea issued forth from the quarries of Pentelicus, was 
allowed in his dungeon a view of the Acropolis, and looked 
upon the goddess of laborious Wisdom face to face. 

What would one not give to know how far he believed in 
her and the other gods of his country ? That he believed in 
much more is certain, as well as that he was cheered by far 
higher than pagan hopes; or, teach what he might, he would 
have taken care that his philosophic ^^ banquet'^ should never 
be garnished with such " bitter herbs'^ as hemlock. It does 
not follow that he did not believe in those gods. Though his 
dying charge to his pupil whom he commanded to sacrifice to 
Esculapius, when his unfriendly physicians were about to cure 
him of the disease of life, was obviously but allegorical in im- 
port, yet we know that he advised Xenophon to consult the 
oracle of Apollo, and that he told his judges he feared the gods 
more than he feared them. Socrates probably believed in one 
great First Cause; but he could hardly have, with certainty, 
inferred from that great truth the non-existence of inferior 
powers and " limitary" intelligences. That the earlier gods of 
his country represented great ideas, he knew; but one hardly 
sees how he could have known whether those ideas were " av- 
toxOovss" born of the human soul alone, or whether they were 
the images of antitypes, existing independently of it. He would 
not have argued such matters like a sciolist or a man of the 
world, or ruled hj a desire to be thought shrewder than his 
neighbors; neither would he have fancied he had explained 
difficulties when he had only explained them away. Alcibiades 



OF GREECE AND TURKEY. 97 

probably scoffed wben he was well, and sent double offerings to 
the gods when he was ill. Socrates must have reflected that it 
is hard to prove a negativOj and impossible by any conjecture 
to get out of the circle of mystery, unless you believe in the 
senses only, and thus construct a philosophy narrow indeed — a 
philosophy for which, as well as for the philosopher, there is 
room enough in the tub of Diogenes- — the kennel of the Cynics. 

Socrates must have observed that the best men he knew were 
commonly devout, and that not in the way of patronizing di- 
vinities, but of revering them; and he knew that his country- 
men had been best and noblest when they were most religious. 
He must have recognized in man a being obviously intended by 
nature to kneel, as well as to lie down or stand; and yet he pro- 
bably had heard of no nation that worshiped but one God. On 
the whole, it seems not unlikely that, believing, by faith, in the 
moral sense, the genius which, as he affirmed, walked beside 
him, guarding him from evil and injury, and believing, by 
reason, in a something higher and more divine, on which what- 
ever is best in man finds its support, he was deterred by that 
docility which is of the family of faith, and not less by that 
understanding which works in subordination to reason, from 
any positive disbelief in his country's gods, however he may 
have doubted as to their existence, and wished to cleanse and 
simplify their worship. 

Such a conclusion would amount to no more than that on 
such matters Socrates was a wise skeptic, and what is rarer 
still, a real "freethinker," that is, a man who tlmiks as well as 
declaims, and is free from vanity as well as from prejudice. 
He appears neither to have waged war against his country's 
religion, nor to have identified his own moral philosophy with 
it. He professed it, which so virtuous a man would hardly 
have done, if he was not at least disposed, rather to believe, 
than to disbelieve it. The last thing one would conclude is, 
9 



98 PICTURESQUE SKETCHES 

that Socrates believed religious faith to be a delusion, but at 
the same time, to be one whicb ought to be respected for the 
sake of its utility. Such a notion springs naturally from indif- 
ferentism, and flatters exclusive pride, without exposing its 
maintainer to peril ; but Socrates was a believer in truth. That 
the public good may be promoted by a forbearance from the 
rash obtrusion of a man's skepticism is a very tenable position 
on the hypothesis that the religion concerning which the skep- 
tic doubts is notwithstanding true, or probably true. No one, 
on the other hand, who has real faith in the moral sense (the 
first revelation accorded to us), and who knows how intimately 
truth, not only in action but in thought, is associated with all 
the good that belongs to man's estate, can doubt that if reli- 
gion were indeed but a delusion and a fraud, the larger and 
more permanent interests of men could never be promoted by 
the worship of a lie. A French philosopher has said (and 
there is philosophy enough in it for a saying) that if '^ a God 
did not exist it would be necessary to invent one." No doubt 
it would be — if it were possible : but it does not follow that 
to create a heliefm a Grod, at once heartfelt and illusory, would 
be possible ; or that to create a belief alone would be salutary. 
Socrates, I have little doubt, would have considered the manu- 
factory of divinities illicit. 

There is one spot alone at Athens which claims a deeper 
reverence even than the cave which is associated with the last 
days of Socrates — the hill of the Areopagus. It is appropriately 
situated between the Pnyx and the Acropolis — Justice thus 
standing with Religion at her right hand, and the place of 
Political deliberation at her left. The Areopagus was guarded 
by yet another local sanction. Not far from it was the sacred 
enclosure where, shadowed over by rocks, and veiled in a grove 
of dusky trees, stood once the awful shrine of the Eumenides, 
who were led thither from the Areopagus after their impeach- 



OF GREECE AND TURKEY. 99 

ment of Oi-estes. No memorial of the Venerable Goddesses 
remains. On tlie hill of the Areopagus we still trace the rocky 
steps by which the judges made their midnight ascent. Their 
deliberations were conducted in the dark, lest their judgment 
should be swayed by the aspect or gestures of the person tried ; 
a singular illustration of the degree in which the susceptive tem- 
perament of the south is influenced by visible objects. Their 
ears were as abstinent as their eyes; and they allowed no species 
of oratory to be introduced into the pleadings before them. It 
is also an illustration of the character of Athenian laws that, 
among the offences tried by them, idleness, which no doubt 
they accounted the "root of all evil,^^ was one. At Athens it 
was those only who had pre-eminently deserved well of their 
country, not the idle, or the improvident, who were maintained 
at the public charge and at the Prytaneum. 

The period during which this court held its sessions on the 
" Hill of Mars'^ was long indeed, if, as the Athenians asserted, 
it had continued from the time of Cecrops. It was Pericles 
himself who diminished its authority, and indirectly relaxed 
the severity of its morals — an injury greater, it is probable, 
than that which he did his countrymen by involving them in 
the Peloponnesian war, and one which justifies the well-known 
aphorism, that the greatest statesmen, next to those who build 
up their country's institutions, are commonly those who under- 
mine them. One cannot help regretting that it was not before 
that court, though in his time it was probably much corrupted, 
instead of before the Bouleuterion, that Socrates was tried. A 
greater than he, however, stood up before this tribunal. Who 
can visit the spot and not call to mind the day when St. Paul 
lifted up his hand there, and pointed to the altar of the "Un- 
known G-od !" Nothing can more pointedly mark the compre- 
hensive and piercing intelligence of the Athenians than the 
fact that in their city alone such an altar stood : nothing can 



100 PICTURESQUE SKETCHES 

show how incompetent an organ of religions truth is intellect 
alone, than the fact that while the Gospel took root in Kome 
itself, the most corrupt city in the world at that time, and 
while apostolic epistles were addressed to Corinth, and to the 
cities of Asia Minor, Athens, the keen, the versatile, and the 
tolerant, let it pass by. As I stood on that spot, I remembered 
a discussion which I had heard years before among some young 
men, most of whom were enthusiastic admirers of Athens. " It 
was not," they remarked, " in art and science only that the 
Athenians excelled; they were also the most charitable of 
men, the most tolerant, and the most zealous in the discovery 
of truth. They never stoned the Prophets like the JewSj nor 
threw Apostles to wild beasts like the Eomans. When St. 
Paul had propounded to them his doctrine, they were at once 
willing to consider it, and answered, ^ We will hear thee again 
on this matter.^" ^^ Yes," remarked a young student who was 
present; "but you will find it stated a little further on that 
they missed their opportunity. St. Paul left them and returned 
no more." The wind "bloweth where it listeth/' and not 
where man lists. 



OF GREECE AND TURKEY. 101 



CHAPTER VII. 

ATHENS. 

A ball at the Palace — A Greek Chief— Lord Byron in Greece — The 
plain of Athens—The Cephysus — The Farm of Plato — Estate and 
residence of an English Settler — Progress of civilization — Position of 
the Greek Church— Influence of French literature. 

I DID not go to Athens for the sake of gay society ; but not- 
withstanding, had an opportunity of seeing something of it the 
day after my arrival, the occasion being that of a ball at the 
palace. The king and queen, in their deportment to their 
guests, were what I suppose is called '^ very gracious '^^ but as 
royal conversations at such times consist chiefly of questions, 
and these questions include no great variety, I need not trouble 
you with this part of the ceremonial. I have seldom witnessed 
a more brilliant spectacle than was presented by the motley 
assemblage of persons from all parts of the world collected on 
that occasion. Unhappily, that wretched attire which we of 
the West boast, and which was introduced when the activities 
of modern life had trampled its dignities under foot, has, to a 
great degree, superseded the national costume. It has not, 
however, done so entirely ; and the splendid Grreek dresses, 
thickly scattered among those more modern habiliments, in- 
vented, apparently, to show how like monkeys men can make 
themselves, gave the scene the character of a pageant. The 
Albanian dress, you are aware, is diiferent from the Greek ; 

9* 



102 PICTURESQUE SKETCHES 

but, in fact, each division of the mainland, and every island, 
has a custome of its own. The wearers of this dazzling attire 
were worthy of it. They had more the air of mountain chief- 
tains, heads of clans, and feudal warriors, than of courtiers. 
Their gestures not only abounded in that perfect grace which 
the slightest consciousness destroys, but in dignity were actually 
imposing : their features resembled those of a statue ; but their 
black eyes, flashing with an uneasy light, and black hair waving 
fiercely on their shoulders, were in strange contrast with the 
serenity of ancient sculpture. 

To one of these majestic chiefs I was introduced. He must 
have been about six feet three inches in height ; and the only 
fault in the grand spectacle which he presented was that his 
waist had been compressed till it was disproportionably small. 
On our being presented to each other he shook hands with me 
very warmly, and I hope that my low bow was as significant 
as Lord Burleigh's shake of the head; since, knowing nothing 
of modern Greek, I had no other means of expressing my re- 
spect for one of the greatest warriors produced by the struggle 
for Greek independence. He at least knew how to make action 
significant. Some days previously he had met in society a lady 
remarkable for her beauty, whom he at once singled out as the 
object of his devotion. He paid her no compliments, even as 
to her dress, as a Frenchman might have done; neither did he 
talk sentiment like an Italian; nor scowl at a rival like a 
Spaniard ; nor stand between her and the fire while he enter- 
tained her with political economy, or the details of his country 
sports, as an Englishman occasionally does on such occasions. 
He drew his sword, stated to her that the weapon had cut off 
the heads of thirty-five Turks — and then laid it at her feet. 
No doubt he would have said something pretty about laying his 
heart there also, if he had known that he had a heart; but the 



OF GREECE AND TURKEY. 103 

Greeks are an impassionate race, simple as well as wily, and 
not addicted to fine sentiments. 

The festal character of the scene was heightened by the 
amusing contrast exhibited by three solemn Turks, who, hour 
after hour, sat cross-legged in silent gravity, seldom moving a 
fold of their cumbrous robes, and indulging in no gesticulation, 
except that now and then they stroked down their flowing beards 
with a soothing hand, and rolled their heavy eyes around with 
staid contempt upon a spectacle which to them must have 
looked several degrees more like Bedlam than a college of 
dancing Dervises does to us. Of the ladies, no doubt they 
thought about as reverently as we do of the " artistes" who ex- 
hibit their dancing powers on the stage of the opera, with such 
vivacity and impartiality as to give the fashionable youth who 
regards them with a glass from his stall, little advantage over 
the honest man who has paid his five shillings and taken up his 
humbler station in the upper gallery. 

Besides several other Philhellenists who had distinguished 
themselves during the Grreek war, one was pointed out to me, 
on this occasion, whom you will recollect. Mr. F., happening 
to hear my name, very kindly introduced himself to me, and 
mentioned that he had known you many years ago. Immedi- 
ately after his short visit to you, he joined the Grreek cause, to 
which he continued faithful during the whole of the war. In 
our discussion on that subject, he told me many interesting 
anecdotes of Lord Byron, with whom he was intimately ac- 
quainted. What he may think of him as a poet, I do not 
know; but he entertains the highest respect for the powers 
which Lord Byron exhibited as a man of action and of business. 
His temper and his shrewdness (as he assures me) were equally 
admirable ; and whenever a quarrel arose between the native 
chiefs, the matter was referred to him as an arbitrator. He 
had always tact enough to allay heart-burnings, and his energy 



104 PICTURESQUE SKETCHES 

was of a nature so eminently practical that not a few of the 
vaporers around him found themselves hard at work when 
they had only thought of a little agreeable excitement. What 
a pity that he was so prematurely cut off ! Who knows but 
that he might have displayed a high military genius, an attri- 
bute which includes so much of imagination as well as of intui- 
tion that it must be in some measure allied with the poetic 
faculty. W^hether, however, he had failed or succeeded, how 
much might not the severities of a few campaigns have done to 
re-invigorate his enervated system, purge away his vanity, and 
shake him out of the self-love which imprisoned him ! Byron 
has never been done justice to, and perhaps never will be. In 
his day he was extravagantly over praised; and after he had 
become the " spoilt child of the public whom he had spoilt," 
his errors were with as little discrimination exaggerated — a vio- 
lent access of virtuous indignation, with which the public is 
periodically visited, concurring with its natural inconstancy. 
His works were, one and all, premature ; forced in the hot-bed 
of a too fervid popularity. His severer critics forgot hgw ad- 
verse his fortunes were to his true greatness. They ask, ^^ Had 
he not rank, wealth, fashion, fame, beauty, &c. &c. ?'^ No 
doubt he had ; but these are only the elaborate nothings that 
cheat a great design ; the petty entanglements that check free 
movement. Grenius, like Virtue, wears its leathern girdle, 
and feeds on scanty fare ; is flung upon faith for support, and 
follows the guidance of a remote hope— in other words, has 
not its portion in the present, that it may lay up store for a 
remoter day. Those who run in flowing attire, not succinct, 
and on the soft field, not the race-course, cannot put out their 
full speed. Considering the eminently practical nature of 
Byron's intellect, as well as the rhetorical character that per- 
vades much of his poetry, and which so singularly combines 
the impassioned eloquence of Koussean with the antithetical 



or GREECE AND TURKEY. 105 

declamation of Pope, it is likely, that if he had steadily devoted 
himself to public life, he might even have become a parliamen- 
tary leader. His temperament, however, would not have allowed 
of such a devotion. 

My new friend, Mr. F., finding that I was meditating an 
expedition to the plain of Marathon, invited me to accompany 
him to a country house which he possesses on an estate not far 
distant from the battle-field. He has made Greek antiquities 
an especial study, and published a pamphlet of much learning 
on the topography of Marathon, as well as of other parts of 
Attica. I had not then read his work; but the deep acqaint- 
ance which his conversation evinced with the ancient authorities 
on such subjects made me feel that I was fortunate in falling 
in with such a guide; and before I had long enjoyed his ac- 
quaintance, I thought myself fortunate on other grounds. We 
mounted our liorses at eleven o'clock, my friend concluding his 
equipment by sticking a brace of pistols into his holsters. 
The air, besides its aromatic sweetness, possessed that bracing 
freshness, which makes people fancy they have wings at their 
shoulders. In that vivacious state of the animal spirits which it 
induces one feels the weight of one's own body no longer, and 
enjoys therefore a condition of bodily health which in our 
northern climates seems the privilege of children alone, who 
for that reason, in a large part, retain that bold and free grace 
of gesture so characteristic of the Greek. The Athenians wore 
upon their silver ornaments the national symbol of the grass- 
hopper, by way of asserting their claim to be an autochthon 
race — that is, a race which had sprung from the Attic soil, not 
migrated thither from another land. After I had breathed the 
intoxicating air which floats over the ^' light soil" of Attica, I 
could hardly help fancying that the buoyant and joyous Athe- 
nian had consulted his bodily sensations as well as his national 
vanity, when he chose for the type of his race that loud-voiced 



106 PICTURESQUE SKETCHES 

insect, without a burthen, who feeds but on sunshine and dew, 
—the 

" Little vauUer in tTie sunny grass, 
Catching its heart up at the feel of June.'"' 

The animal races catch the contagion; and as we rode along 
that delightful spring morning, my horse, a little, flexible, riotous 
creature, seemed to snuff up oats in the air, and to gather 
strength from the breeze. 

For five hours we pushed on through a country if possible 
more picturesque than beautiful. Its character on a sunny day 
is that of extreme variety, added to vividness of coloring : it is, 
however, when the sky is overcast, a thing of rare occurrence, that 
the mountains really look like mountains, and that a sort of 
soft and luxuriant grandeur becomes their character. In sunny 
weather, the clearness of the air makes the colors so brilliant, and 
brings out details with such distinctness, that distance vanishes, 
and you fancy the remote mountain to be a hill hard by. As we 
rode along under the shadow of Hymettus, a mountain 3000 
feet high, it looked so small that I could easily understand the 
irreverent familiarity with which the old poets treated it, cele- 
brating it rather for its bees and its honey than for any of 
those mysterious charms which make the poet of the north 
exclaim— 

" The tall rock, 
The mountain, and the deep and gloomy wood, 
Haunted me like a passion." 

After leaving the skirts of Hymettus, we rode on through a 
region of olive-woods, whose opens were sprinkled with newly- 
made gardens, and found ourselves soon in a' broken waste of 
slightly undulating ground extending for miles around us, and 
hemmed in on every side by mountains. This is the plain of 



OF GREECE AND TURKEY. 107 

Athens. It is a shallow and all but barren soil, with little 
vegetation except that of the wild thyme^ ■which carpets it 
thickly as heath, imparting a lavender hue to the tract hard by, 
and a violet shade to the distance. As we advanced, the scenery 
grew wilder and the vegetation more luxuriant. Gradually we 
entered a region sprinkled with pines of a species resembling 
the stone-pine, as well as with oak and ilex. The ravines be- 
came deeper and more numerous; and here and there we passed 
through thickets of arbutus in full flower, which reminded me 
of Killarney, though in Greece I have seen none comparable in 
size with those of MucrUss and Dinis. In a few minutes more 
our horses were wading through a stream which hardly reached 
their knees. It was the famed Cephisus. Close by is the 
village of Cephisia, girt by a few orchards, stunted olives, and 
almond-trees, and a few vineyards swarthing some half-ob- 
literated ruins, and hiding not so much the remains of a place 
once so celebrated, as the absence of remains. Cephisus was 
the native place of Menander, and the spot which Herodes 
Atticus, in the reign of Trajan selected for the enjoyment of 
his learned leisure and meditative idleness. The gardens, 
porticoes, and terraces, with which he adorned it — the baths 
and streams with which he refreshed it — the arcades which 
cooled those streams with their shadows — all are gone; like the 
thoughts that chased each other in the brain of the philosopher, 
or the fancies that bubbled up in his imagination as he conversed 
here with his friends. Not far from this place is a spot of far 
deeper interest — Heracle. Here Plato lived in his quiet and 
secluded farm. No trace now remains of the abode of the 
greatest of philosophers, and the man who, perhaps, of all un- 
inspired men, has exercised the largest and most beneficent 
influence among mankind. 

The estate of my friend is certainly an enviable possession. 
It is situated in the heart of the mountain scenery of Attica, 



108 • PICTURESQUE SKETGHES 

It lies at about an equal distance between tbe ranges of Pente- 
licus and of ParneS; the former rising to the height of 3500 feet, 
the latter of 4500. I specify the height of these mountains, 
because it is a common mistake to suppose that Attica is a flat 
country, merely because it does not boast a Parnassus or an 
Erymanthus. On the contrary, its two great plains, those of 
Athens and MesogsBa, are girdled by hills as high as any which 
G-reat Britain can boast. Mr. P.'s estate rises in some parts to 
an elevation of about 2000 feet, and is split into a labyrinth of 
picturesque defiles more numerous than I should have thought 
could exist within the space. The rugged soil is richly sprinkled 
with what is rare in Attica — magnificent oak-trees, at least as 
large as those which would have their fame in an English park. 
Between them stand, now singly, now in knolls, majestic broad- 
headed pines with trunks twisted into fantastic shapes by many 
a storm; billowy summits, and branches of ^^ reverend gray- 
green" that bend beneath the weight of their cones. The rocks 
glitter with the brilliant green leaves and white blossoms of the 
arbutus ; and the ravines are so tangled with thickets of broom, 
lentiscus, holly, ivy, cistus, wild-pear, juniper, tamarisk, thyme, 
and dwarf evergreen oak, that you are glad to follow a leader 
and tread where the goat has cleared a way for you. 

We arrived an hour after sunset at Mr. F.'s residence, a 
modest but comfortable farm-house. It is in a large part, sur- 
rounded by a village for his laborers, the country being so 
disturbed that the peasantry are afraid of living in scattered 
abodes. Close by is a pretty garden, already planted with 
orange-trees and flowers, as well as with the more utilitarian 
classes of vegetables. My friend showed his new improvements 
with no small pride ; and, indeed, it is impossible not to feel a 
deep interest in watching the progress of a country which, 
though rich in ancient monuments, yet remains, with reference 
to the conveniences of life, as completely in a wild state as New 



OF GREECE AND TURKEY. 109 

Zealand can be. A large part of the teatli is already turned 
into corn land; but Geres — like some other recent potentates — 
can claim only to be a constitutional monarch here, and her 
sway is not only limited, but ill-assumed. Nature in this wild 
region, ^^ though vanquished, still retires with strife,'^ and keeps 
up a not unequal battle with the industry of man. The ane- 
mones and narcissi, when I visited the spot, forced their way 
unceremoniously up among the green blades of springing corn. 
Retrenched into one corner, a little phalanx of jonquils held 
its ground against whole armies of barley and oats; and irre- 
gular squadrons of crocus and wild tulips eiFected a second 
lodgment in the newly-peopled land, or lingered long in the 
rear with a Parthian flight, scattering their seeds behind them 
instead of arrows. My friend led me in triumph through files 
of wild pears and plums, grafted with scions of a gentler kind, 
brought me to the trenches lately opened for the vines, boasted 
of the obdurate thorns he had eradicated, and of the subject 
almond-trees he had admitted to the freedom of his domain — 
^nhe mighty we slaughtered, the lovely we spared'^ — nor, in- 
deed, could the sternest improver who had ever seen those 
almonds blossoming in their bowers, sometimes white as snow, 
sometimes rose-colored like the same snow when flushed with 
sunset, condemn them to destruction for the sake of supplying 
their places with trim currant-bushes. 

The household was in strict harmony with the estate. My 
friend laughed loud as he ran about performing for himself 
those offices which we, effeminate children of the west, require 
to be discharged for us by the hands of others. Even amongst 
us he would, however, have been an object of admiration as 
well as of wonder for his skill in wielding the pruning-hook. 
Many a modern country gentleman v/ho does not know that 
Laertes, prince of Ithaca, wore goat-skin gloves to defend his 
hands from thorns when pruning his garden fiuit trees, is yet 
10 



110 PICTURESQUE SKETCHES 

proud of his skill in lopping his plantations. Such a person 
might, however, have stared at my friend when he laid down his 
pruning knife to hand a fat turkey to his cook, arranged the 
table himself, and then returned to his vines. Servants in 
Greece are not the least deficient either in courtesy or in kind- 
ness, a quality as necessary in a servant as a master; but in 
early periods of society the higher classes fortunately have not 
contracted the bad habit of helplessness. The custom of con- 
founding helplessness with dignity is surely one of the signs of 
a very barbarous civilization — to use a phrase which, I believe, 
includes no contradiction. A Chinese mandarin cannot con- 
descend to feed himself with his own fingers, though he does 
not actually think it necessary to eat by proxy. A very fine 
gentleman among us hardly considers himself able to walk, and 
would no more carry home in his hand a small volume which 
he had just bought in a book shop than he would harness him- 
self to a cab and draw it round Hyde Park. Once, I believe, 
it was thought a rather ignoble thing to be able to see well 
without a glass; whether indeed it has not sometimes been 
fashionable to be a little deaf is more than I can say. The 
Greeks in old time had a different notion of dignity. Proud 
of bodily strength as well as of beauty, they were not ashamed 
of offices which required manual skill. Princes alternately 
herded oxen and delivered the law ; and royal virgins, who 
emblazoned in embroidery the wars of the giants and the his- 
tories of the gods, were not above milking the cows. I con- 
fess there has always been a great charm for me in this union 
of high refinement with simplicity. That surely was not an 
unpolished people whose sovereigns required no aid from pomp 
in order to retain respect; and whose villagers, shepherds, and 
fishermen could appreciate the poetry of Homer, as they sat in 
a circle around the wandering minstrel. 

Our dinner over^ we flung our pine cones on the fire, and, 



OF GREECE AND TURKEY. Ill 

by its genial liglit, passed hour after hour in animated con* 
verse. The state and prospects of the country were our chief 
theme^ and fortunate I thought myself in having met one so 
well qualified, both by ability and by his peculiar opportuni- 
ties, to give me information. Large, indeed, and various are 
the interests which attach themselves to the political well-being 
of this little kingdom, which has so lately added, not only a 
new member, but a new race to the family of European nations. 
I must not, however, occupy your attention with a subject so 
complicated, and, above all, so constantly varying, as that of 
Grreek politics. The ecclesiastical relations of the country may 
one day re-act in a remarkable manner on the religious system 
of Europe. The Greek church is, perhaps, the only instance 
in Europe of a church, nominally, at least, independent alike 
of the Pope, of the State, and of popular interference. In that 
church, however, there are two parties. One of them, as is 
supposed, is devoted, in ecclesiastical matters, to the obedience 
of the Patriarch of Constantinople ; and, in political matters, 
is not a little subject to Russian influence. This party consists, 
in a large measure, of the bishops who, as the scandal goes, 
desire to be translated to the richer sees of the east. In the 
east, translations to the higher dignities are seldom, I fear, the 
reward of eminent sanctity. As seldom are they connected 
with learning, if report is to be trusted : no one there wields 
the pastoral staff on account of the skill with which he has 
wielded the pen of the annotator; nor are bishoprics there 
among the rich fruits which grow from "Hebrew roots.'' The 
parochial clergy, and the majority of the laity, are said to be 
much attached to the principle of ecclesiastical independence. 
If that independence should last, and should turn out conducive 
to spiritual good, it must surely have an effect, by its example, 
on the religious relations of western Europe. The Grreek may, 
however, discover, like the Galilean church of the last century. 



112 ^ PICTURESQUE SKETCHES 

that ^^ liberties" are not always tlie way to liberty; that an 
extra-national centre is as often a support as a yoke ; and that, 
if Church and State sit by the same hearth, the latter will con- 
trive to get his legs at both sides of the fire. The marriage 
of the clergy prevents them from exercising any formidable 
political influence, and they possess the confidence and affec- 
tion of the people, who rightly attribute their continued exist- 
ence as a people to the common bond of a uniform religious 
faith. 

The ignorance in which the clergy have remained during 
ages of slavery continues to a great extent still, owing chiefly 
to their poverty. They are obliged to eke out their living as 
they may ; and it happens frequently that the priest, who is a 
blacksmith or ploughman as well as a clergyman, has to leave 
his iron on the anvil, or the ox in his stall, while he celebrates 
divine service in the church hard by. As a necessary result, 
superstitions of all sorts have insinuated themselves into the 
popular belief. Far from withstanding, the clergy commonly 
partake of these. Their knowledge of religion is too often 
confined to an acquaintance with its ceremonial. That cere- 
monial, however, is not therefore to be deemed the cause of 
those superstitions ; on the contrary, it may well be doubted 
whether for whatever knowledge of Christian theology they 
retain both clergy and laity are not almost exclusively indebted 
to that venerable ritual which has embalmed the most important 
doctrines and facts of Christianity. 

This Jgnorance is becoming, however, a more dangerous 
thing than it once was. The higher classes, having seen a 
great deal of the world, in consequence of their recent political 
changes, and the number of foreigners who visit Athens, and 
having picked up a good deal of ill- digested knowledge, with a 
rapidity which is hardly consistent with that grave process, the 
crystalization of knowledge into wisdom, are growing impatient 



OF GREECE AND TURKEY. 113 

of ecclesiastical authority, especially when vested in the hand 
of an ignorant clergy. The young men, I fear, are somewhat 
infected with skeptical opinions, a circumstance which may be 
in some measure accounted for by the attention paid to French 
literature. The Grreeks extend their political antipathies to the 
language of G-ermany : nor, indeed, do I think it likely that^ 
with a temperament and intellectual structure so opposed to the 
Teutonic, they could, even if free from prejudice, have attached 
themselves to the Grerman literature. They are accustomed to 
clear air ; they dislike what gives them trouble ; and the whole 
cloud region of verse and prose they would willingly abandon 
to the Ixions of literature. They are jealous of the Italian 
language likewise, and have taken great pains, not without 
success, to eradicate from their own the many words of Italian 
origin which had crept into it. Few Italian or Turkish words 
now remain ; but the former tongue had, in the Ionian islands, 
almost superseded G-reek ; and as the Greeks are as proud of 
their language as of their country, so recent a yoke has, of course, 
left a disagreeable impression behind. 

The consequence of these literary antipathies is that the 
G-reeks have been thrown upon French, a language with which 
nearly all of the wealthier classes in and about Athens are ac- 
quainted ; and that French novels are the works which chiefly 
abound in the book shops. Can one imagine a greater misfor- 
tune, especially to so young a nation ? The French themselves 
may be in some measure acclimatized as regards the worst part 
of their modern literature ; indeed, poison itself loses its efficacy 
when men have become slowly accustomed to it; and at all 
events they retain the glories of their ancient literature, in 
which they can take refuge from the pollutions and insanities 
of that most prominent of late. But in the case of a young 
nation, what a calamity to be introduced to the boundless re= 
gions of intellect and fancy with a mountebank for a guide I 

10* 



114 PICTURESQUE SKETCHES 

How far must it not tend to remove them at once from revealed 
truth^ and from the truth of Nature ! In what a labyrinth of 
conventional fancies does it not threaten to ensnare them, and 
in what a swamp of unsound sentiment to engulf them ! How 
little favorable must such an influence prove to a just apprecia- 
tion of that literature of which the Grreeks are called upon to 
take possession as lawful heirs ! To read Sophocles just after 
laying down Alexander Dumas and Paul de Kock must be 
like turning on a beautiful picture an eye dazzled by a conflagra- 
tion, or trying the flavor of Falernian wine, sealed up " Consule 
Planco/' with a palate exasperated by raw spirits. I have 
some hope, however, that the shrewd wit of the Greek may 
discover the cheat passed off on him, and that the truthfulness 
of passion and of nature which belongs to him may revolt from 
the artificial and the fantastic. 



OF GREECE AND TURKEY. 115 



CHAPTER VIII. 

MARATHON, 

The neighborhood of Athens — Site of Aphidnae — Expedition to Marathon 
— rThe Plains of Marathon — The tumulus — Influence of the battle of 
Marathon on Greece — Wars not unmixed evils — 'Assistance rendered 
by the god Pan to the Greeks. 

The day after our arrival at Mr. F.^s^ we spent in riding 
about the neighboring country, sometimes in search of antiqui- 
tieS; sometimes — for on such occasions we soon turn epicures— in 
search of views yet more beautiful than those which met us 
everywhere. It would be difficult to describe, and not easy to 
forget, the ravines smothered in arbutus that we pushed our 
way through, the promontories, shaggy with spreading ilex, 
that we wound around, and the glorious and jubilant views 
that we contemplated, now of the sea-like plain of Athens, now 
of the broad and azure sea. I speak of the plain of Athens as 
if it were flat, for such it appears when looked down on from 
the heights which we ascended, but it has in reality nothing in 
common with the Campagna of Rome, which— admirably in 
character with its position — is as level as the outer court of a 
palace. The plain of Athens is nearly everywhere undulating 
in surface, is pierced with little narrow glens, and hollowed 
into wide green basins, decked with the softest vegetation and 
secluded like so many nests. The rivers that wind among the 
Athenian hills have a peculiar character of their own. They 
are but streams, except when swollen by sudden floods, and at 



116 PICTURESQUE SKETCHES 

this season there was seldom much difficulty in wading across 
them ; their windings^ however, are as tortuous as the folds of 
a serpent, and irresistibly attract the traveler to follow them 
through their dim ravines shadowed with juniper and ilex. 
From their sands, pure as pearl, rise luxuriant bowers of ole- 
ander, frequently about the size that hazel thickets attain 
among us. Depressed by their own weight, these empurpled 
copses lean across the stream which glides beneath their mass- 
ive flowerage in amethyst instead of emerald. 

The spot most remarkable for its historical associations which 
we visited this day was the site of the ancient Aphidnse, the 
birthplace of Tyrteus, the lame minstrel, to whom Sparta owed 
its freedom, as well as of Hormodius and Aristogeiton, the 
deliverers of Athens. Aphidnse, however, has earlier records 
than these. It was the city in which Thesus concealed Helen, 
then not more than nine years old, whom he carried off, and 
whom her brothers. Castor and Pollux, pursued and recovered. 
It is magnificently situated at the summit of a hill crowned 
with an oval platform of almost architectural regularity. 
Nothing more precious than a few fragments of ancient pottery 
has yet been found in its neighborhood, but as no search but 
the most trivial has been made, we may still expect interesting 
discoveries from a spot which always remained among the 
most important of Athenian fortresses. 

The morning after our visit to Aphidnse, we mounted our 
horses again at about ten o'clock, and started for Marathon. 
The weather was beautiful, and the scenery, as we approached 
the plain, became gradually grander. The mountains opened 
out into simpler forms ; the ravines widened into valleys ; and 
beyond them swelled the sea, sometimes in wide expanse, but 
more often so cut by rocks, promontories, and the slopes of the 
nearer hills, as to look like a chain of lakes. After a ride of 
about three hours we reached the plain of Marathon, a worthy 



OF GREECE AND TURKEY. 117 

theatre for perhaps the most important battle which the world 
ever saw. The field is about six miles long and two broad : in 
shape it is tolerably regular, and is as flat as the sea that leans 
against it, and, as Landor, says, 

" Level with the green herbage seems still higher." 

On two sides it is hemmed in by the mountains of Attica, and 
on one by the loftier ranges of Euboea, which, as we approached 
them, peered above their clouds glittering with snow. Just 
far enough from the shore to be tinged with blue lies the 
island of Cea, the native place of Simonides, the tenderest, if 
tradition may be trusted, of all the Greek poets. How often 
must his songs, as well as the slenderer note of lark and 
thrush, have been heard on that plain which the Persian 
trumpet once shook ! Their minstrelsy still remains ; but we 
ask in vain for 

" One precious tender-hearted strain of pure Simonides." 

I thought of him when my eye first fell on the island, and 
again when, riding into the field which once echoed with onset 
of the Median cavalry, we heard all around no music more 
warlike than the bleating of the lambs and the cooing of the 
wild pigeons — perhaps the best accompaniment to songs like his. 
Within about half a mile of the shore stands the tumulus 
raised by Aristides over the Athenians who fell in the action. 
It was from the top of this mound that we contemplated a 
spectacle the great associations of which were so strikingly con- 
trasted with the scene beheld by the outward eye, characterized 
as that was by a mingled expression of soft enjoyment and 
profound repose — such repose as follows a storm. The soil is 
here and there beginning, after its long sabbath, to minister 
again to human wants. A few patches, which the plough had 
opened, had begun to sprout with fresh blades of corn ; but 



118 PICTURESQUE SKETCHES 

these exceptions did not jar upon the solemnity of the scene. 
A light breeze was gliding over the illuminated plain, and 
gently rippling the' sea which flashed merrily beyond it with a 
blue light. It was just sufficient to refresh us after our ride, 
and to wave the anemones, crocuses, and jonquils, at the base 
of the mound, which was covered to the summit with the yel- 
low asphodel, and a flower called spheiidane, whose tall pink 
spikes stood erect in defiance of the breeze, and in whose 
flowers the bees murmured securely. As I stood on the trium- 
phant funeral mound, and, looking round, contrasted that peace- 
ful plain with the spectacle it must once have presented, a great 
black shadow passed rapidly along the ground, and my companion 
called on me to look up. I raised my eyes in time to see an eagle 
aslant against the sky, and drifting away upon expanded wings to 
his mountain home. It was now time to return. I took the first 
good gallop I had had since I left home, on the plain of Marathon, 
and turned at last to leave it at a more sober pace. Again we 
crossed the shallow rivers, startling the thrushes and blackbirds 
out of the brakes that bend across them (the nightingales had 
not yet made themselves audible), and stopping now and then 
to watch the progress of the violet shades as they stole down 
the distant glens, and the auburn lights more near, with which 
the rounded and heath-covered eminences seemed to burn. 

We reached home about sunset, eat our dinner with a good 
appetite, thought we had earned it almost as well as if we had 
fought in the great battle of Marathon, instead of having only 
made a pilgrimage to the plain, and passed the evening discuss- 
ing the efi'ects of that battle, and all the aff'airs of the Eastern 
world — Egypt, Syria, Arabia, Turkey, G-reece. How mar- 
velously each of those countries was led on from small begin- 
nings to great destinies ; and how marvelously from each was 
its " candlestick removed,'^ when it had done its part, and 
shown itself incapable of doing more ! None of these countries 



OF GREECE AND TURKEY. 119 

perished without leaving to the world a great inheritance : it 
is on their bequests that we live, and out of their ruins that our 
social structures have been built. The old Latin adage, that a 
serpent is powerless till he has eaten a serpent, might be ap- 
plied to nations. Every nation which has vindicated to itself 
any true greatness has absorbed, either politically, or morally 
and intellectually, some nation that had preceded it. The 
G-reek intellect absorbed and assimilated all that was most 
valuable in the political and philosophic lore of nations further 
to the east, except Palestine. Rome in turn absorbed G-reecej 
and Roman law with Teutonic manners (both fused together 
by the vital heat of Christianity), built up the civilization of 
Mediseval Europe. The European commonwealth thus inhe- 
rited all that antiquity and the East had done and thought. 
America inherits us. It was Bishop Berkeley who recorded 
iu verse the fact that civilization has ever rolled on in one 
great wave from the East to the West. Did he prophesy truly 
when he said " Time's noblest conquest is his last ?" Time 
only can answer. In the meanwhile, how nearly has the wave 
of civilization gone round the world I When it has reached its 
western limit, what will remain for it but that, rolling still for- 
ward, it should burst again on the shores of the eastern world. 
It is in vain I suspect that we send our missionaries and our 
books backward to the east. A retrograde course is not 
allowed us. On the other hand, what new morning is not des- 
tined to burst over the world, when, the first great revolution 
completed, the second commences, and from populous cities 
and flourishing states on the shores of the Pacific, the great and 
developed European Mind breaks in sudden dawn upon the 
land of Confucius? That time cannot now be far distant — be- 
fore the year 2000 it must, judging from the rate of progress 
at present observable, be at hand. The millenarians might find 
in this circumstance a philosophical confirmation of their reve- 



120 PICTURESQUE SKETCHES 

ries with respect to the new era which is to set in all over the 
world when the 6000 years since Adam are completed^ and the 
Sabba-tical thousand has commenced. 

Strange and stirring is the reflection that all which Greece has 
done for the world^ in other words, all that the world now is, 
wonld never have existed if the battle of Marathon had been lost; 
— perhaps we might add, if it had never been fought. It was 
Persia that created a historic and developed G-reece, and changed 
into vigorous nations the secluded tribes previously contented, 
for the most part, with a narrow and inglorious life within their 
several cantons. The Persian invasion combined them, made 
them feel their power, made them know their name, encom- 
passed with the golden ring of Hellenic unity their various and 
often contending races. The Persian invasion at the same 
time stimulated them to a general emulation ; for it acquainted 
each with its strength, and introduced it into a region of glory, 
in which all strove as athletes in the Olympic games. The 
Persian invasion developed their intellect in awakening their 
moral energies. Never has the world witnessed a phenomenon 
so wonderful as the rapid expansion of the Athenian mind 
after the Persian war. The ten centuries which had elapsed 
from the days of Cecrops to those of Themistocles had left be- 
hind them little except legend and fable. In one century after 
that period the pent up energies had fully flowered, and the 
widest development of intellect that the world has ever known 
had taken place. Athens had produced the statesmanship of 
Themistocles and Pericles ; the three great tragedians, j^schy- 
lus, Sophocles, and Euripides, had celebrated the mythic 
legends of Greece ; Socrates had taught his countrymen, and 
Aristophanes had amused them ; Plato and Aristotle had built 
up those two opposed philosophies, the essence perhaps of all 
that the world has since done in metaphysics; Herodotus and 
Thucydides had written their histories ; Phidias had sculptured 



OF GREECE AND TURKEY. 121 

his Jupiter, Pallas, and that Panatheniac possession which has 
ever remained the perfect model of Grecian art ; Demosthenes 
had heard the heroic tale, and caught the fire. To these names 
how many more might not be added ? The materials no doubt 
must have existed before, and centuries may have been needed 
to collect and to arrange them ; but it was the Persian war 
which dropt upon the frankincense the one spark necessary to 
kindle the pyre and to light the sacrifice. 

The progress of nations resembles that of individual men. 
In the history of individuals, the severest trials notoriously 
supply the noblest opportunities ; and the progress of years is 
often made in the brief effort necessary to withstand some ex- 
traordinary temptation, or subdue some external difficulty. 
Such are the compensations accorded in the moral world. Not 
less remarkable are those which belong to the political. That 
roused energy with which a nation preserves its independence 
from foreign aggression, or redeems it when lost, carries it far 
across the frontier which it defends. Once taught the might 
that is latent in the human heart, it trusts itself, and that 
might is doubled. Every citizen, knowing that the eyes of all 
are upoii him, labors as though the energies of all were com- 
passed in his single breast — a whole nation becomes charged 
with that spirit which vivifies human hearts as a thunder storm 
is said to vivify the germs of vegetable life ; and, moving as 
one man, multiplies its power a thousand fold by union. When 
the sword has done its work, enterprise and enthusiasm still 
demand their objects, and the intellect leaps from its sheath. 

Marathon was not a glorious field alone; it was more useful 
than ever yet was factory, railway, or the richest land that Hol- 
land has snatched from the sea. There are many persons who 
rejoice in the prospect of a time when wars will be rendered 
impossible by the close commercial relations which, as they an- 
ticipate, must one day bind nation with nation. I cannot say 
11 



122 PICTURESQUE SKETCHES 

that this seems to me a very profound philosopliy. Wars spring 
from the bad passions of men^ and if they could be prevented 
by a gradual subjugation of such disturbing forceS; no doubt 
there would then be much cause to rejoice in so auspicious a 
change. It does not follow^ however, that nations would be 
the better if wars were suppressed by a merely external hin- 
drance, such as the inconvenience of interference with trade. 
In the first place, a prolonged peace, thus artificially main- 
tained, would probably produce internal discontents by denying 
the passions their natural outlet, and would thus promote that 
worst species of war, the civil war of class against class. In 
the second place, it would probably prevent a nation from re- 
cognizing its great men, or even perceiving its need of great- 
ness, whether hereditary, elective, or self-asserted. It is through 
its fears that a people feels love and reverence ; and it is through 
external dangers that it is reminded that it has external rela- 
tions. Without marked and definite external relations a nation 
does not properly exist as such. It may exist as a populace, 
and then it is like a herd of wolves ; or as a people, and then 
it is an ox grazing in deep meads, and pacific, except when 
molested by the gad-fly; but it must have practical external 
bearings before it is elevated into that beautiful and brave war- 
horse, a nation, and taught to glory in bridle and spur, and to 
^^ clothe its neck in thunder." It is only when it has gradu- 
ated as a nation that a race completes its being, consummates 
its work, brings forth its perfect fruits of action, passion, 
thought, its arts and its sciences, as well as that great and sci- 
entific heroic poem, the hierarchy of an ordinary society, ever 
changing, yet ever preserving its continuity. 

As little philosophical does it seem to me, whether we re- 
gard the history of Greece or of any other country, to associate 
war merely with images of barbarism, violence, or folly. There 
is more of the pedagogue than of the thinker in this compen- 



OF GREECE AND TURKEY. 123 

dioiis view of the matter. It is not borne out by fact. Dr. 
Johnson may affirm Alexander or Caesar to have been no better 
than a robber on a hirge scale ', but he could hardly deny that 
these remarkable specimens of the robber kind were often in- 
fluenced by exalted motives, and inspired by the noblest intel- 
lects accorded to man (if we except the first class of contem- 
plative minds); that heroism went beside them in their march, 
and that civilization, religion, the triumphs of humanity, and 
the great designs of Providence, followed in their train. Had 
Britain repulsed Caesar, the effort might perhaps have made it 
a nation ; its failure affords us some grounds for concluding that 
it was better for her to- become a part of a great empire, which 
governed its dependencies wisely, than to preserve its savage 
independence. The failure of Xerxes, on the other hand, 
abundantly proves that he had no true vocation to be a con- 
queror of Hellas. The attempt was not, therefore, without 
consequences. His 400,000 soldiers turned out to be but an 
embassage sent to inform the G-reeks that it was time for them 
to be up and doing; that "arts, though unimagined, yet to be," 
demanded their birth; and that, ere long, there would be need 
of the philosopher who trained up Alexander. Even aggressive 
wars are not mere evils, reprehensible as they undoubtedly are, 
and with whatever sufferings they may be attended. For every 
such war there is a war of defence also; and such a war calls 
out and exercises all the nobler parts of our nature, patriotism, 
courage, the enthusiasm that takes a man out of himself and 
breaks through the chains of conventional littleness, the ar- 
dor that unites him to a great cause, the strong human feeling 
that makes him value blessings which he has discovered to be 
precarious, and all those manlier virtues which must perish if 
they be not employed, and in the absence of which man be- 
comes a soft, effeminate, mechanical being, equally incapable 
of elevated thought and of genuine action. In fine^ without 



124 PICTURESQUE SKETCHES 

denying tliat wars are evils^ it is no paradox to maintain that 
we should be worse without them^ unless we could rise above 
them: and that for a moral disease^ none but a moral could be 
the genuine cure. They are a part of man's chequered lot here 
below; and the vicissitudes to which they expose man are better 
than the dust and ashes of a Chinese civilization. Human 
wars, no more than human loves, proceed merely from impulses 
common to man and the inferior races; they have their nobler 
as well as their inferior parts — for just indignation and ven- 
geance, as well as mercy and love, have their antitypes above; 
and even in the unjust there is commonly a mixture of erring 
aspiration and right principle misapplied. 

The fact that defensive wars are religious wars and assisted 
by religious sanctions is in no instance more remarkably illus- 
trated than in the glorious defence of G-reece against Persia. 
Among the instances of supernatural aid by which the righte- 
ous cause was supposed to have been vindicated, perhaps the 
most remarkable was the interference of the god Pan, who had 
promised to leave his Arcadian retreats, and to help the Athe- 
nians at Marathon. It was in commemoration of such aid that 
the Athenians dedicated to that pastoral, and not less mystical, 
divinity, the cave in the rocky foundations of the Acropolis 
which still bears his name. As I gazed on that cave I could 
not but call to mind that the support which the Athenians be- 
lieved they had received was no other than that to which 
Wordsworth appealed on behalf of the Tyrolese. The circum- 
stance is a singular instance of that analogy of thought which 
is to be found in all places and at all times, when great minds 
are moved by great events. The deepest poet of modern times, 
uttering, in his "Sonnets dedicated to Liberty ,^^ his solemn 
and authoritative protest against the aggressive tyranny of Buo- 
naparte, and exhorting each nation of Europe, in turn, to with- 



OP GREECE AND TURKEY. 125 

stand that aggression to the death, admonishes them likewise 
that 

" The power of armies is a visible thing, 
Formal and cirumscribed in time and place." 

And bids them place their trust in that universal principle of 
Strength, Justice, and Immortality, of which the soul of man 
is the special abode, and of which Pan was a Pagan iype. 

"O'er the wide earth, on mountain and on plain, 
Dwells in the affections and the soul of man 
A Godhead, like the universal Pan, 
But more exalted, with a brighter train. 
And shall his bounty be dispensed in vain, 
Showered equally on city and on field. 
And neither hope nor steadfast promise yield 
In these usurping times of fear and pain? 
Such doom awaits us — nay, forbid it. Heaven ! 
We know the arduous strife, the eternal laws 
To which the triumph of all good is given, 
High sacrifice, and labor without pause. 
Even to the death : — else wherefore should the eye 
Of man converse with immortality!"' 

The day after our visit to Marathon, we rode back to Athens 
by a road more rugged than any we had yet traversed. Bend- 
ing towards the north, it wound along the precipices under 
Mount Parnes, passing through every variety of glen and 
gorge. The day was overcast and eminently favorable for 
Athenian mountains, giving them an elevation not usually 
theirs. Nothing could be more charming than the glimpses 
we caught of peak beyond peak, and the long perspective of 
valleys opening out between the cloudy promontories of Pente- 
licus and Hymettus. Never have I seen such a multitude of 
rainbows as in the Greek mountains. On this occasion, the 
arch was seldom perfect. The prismatic colors commonly 

11* 



126 PICTURESQUE SKETCHES 

diffused themselves on the skirt of some driving cloud; or^ 
tinging the mist just as it rushed in unending stream past its 
rocky harrier, advanced with it, as though the mouth of the 
valley was breathing fire. As we scaled the mountain side 
above the region of oak and pine, the steeps were covered with 
a luxuriant wood of arbutus in full flower, which sloped away 
for miles below us, and rose above us till the clouds hid them 
from our sight. On the higher parts of our mountain path^ 
their leaves were moulded with snow, and looked like the 
sculptured wreaths of the Parthenon. The moss which covered 
the projecting ridges of the rock were fringed, to the borders 
of the snow, with bright clusters of crocus and jonquil, yellow 
and blue ; and little icicles hung in the caverned shadow of the 
crags, and let fall their diamond drops in the sun. On a 
circular hill, detached, but yet part of the range of Parnes, we 
came to some ruined walls. Every ruin, however minute, in 
Attica is a monument; accordingly I asked my friend what he 
could tell me of that which lay before us. It was no other 
than Decelea, one of the chief Athenian fortresses, which the 
Spartans took possession of in the year B. C. 413, and in 
quiet possession of which they were allowed to remain for ten 
years, laying waste at will the country all around, until Athens 
itself became their prey. The position was so strong that it 
would not have been easy to dislodge them : on the other hand, 
it seems almost incredible that the Athenians should year after 
year have pursued their usual avocations with an enemy esta- 
blished in the centre of their country, and not more than twelve 
miles from the capital. No doubt to that volatile race the cir- 
cumstance, when no longer a novelty, ceased to be interesting. 
From that eminence the Spartans must almost have been able 
to watch the Panathenaic procession winding up the steep of 
the Acropolis, or the "Men of Athens'^ flocking day by day to 
the temple of Bacchus. How often must a scornful smile have 
passed over the rigid features of a Spartan, awake to duty and 



OF GREECE AND TURKEY. 127 

asleep to art, as he witnessed a spectacle that involved, in as 
whimsical a form, a deeper moral than ever Aristophanes sub- 
mitted to an audience of his countrymen. The men who flocked 
contentedly to the theatre with an enemy encamped within 
sight, were the sons and grandsons of those who had fought at 
Marathon ! Above them rose the Parthenon and the statue of 
Pallas — but man is not always worthy of the works of his 
own hands. 

Descending into the plain of Athens, we advanced rapidly 
toward our goal, and ere long the six temples of the metropolis 
began to define their outlines more clearly. Behind them, 
under a sky disordered with fleeting snow-racks, the sea stretched 
far away like a plate of silver. Kound the sun a watery circle, 
like that which one often sees around the moon, extended, 
melting wanly away into a faint radiance. In a few minutes 
more we were in the valley of the Cephisus. Ere long we had 
reached Colonos, and stood on the spot upon which Sophocles 
makes the blind Theban king take his stand. I tarried there 
for a little time, and called to mind that chorus (it has few 
rivals even in Sophocles) in which the grove sacred to the 
Eumenides is described. The modern poet asks — 

Colonos ! can it be that thou hast still 

Thy cypress, and thine olive, and thy vine?* 

A few olive-trees are still in the neighborhood; but if all 
remained that the great tragedian describes, the mystic glory 
imparted to it by his imagination would equally be wanting. 
Again we rode on, and before long had passed the temple of 
Theseus, and reached the banks of the Ilissus, and the vast 
columns of the temple of Jupiter. And so ends my visit to 
Marathon. As a memorial of it I have carried off a stout 
walking-stick of cedar cut upon the plain. Its ancestor, let 
us believe, gave a sound beating to a Persian. 

* " School of the Heart, and other Poems," by the Rev. H. Alford. 



128 PICTURESQUE SKETCHES 



CHAPTER IX. 

ELEUSIS. 

Degree in which the physical characteristics of Attica moulded the 
Athenian character — Its shallow soil, its light air, its quarries, its 
mines-— Its freedom from rapacious aggression, its dependence on 
maritime enterprize — The road toEleusis — Athenian landscape — An- 
cient procession to Eieusis — Its position— Ancient remains — Cha- 
racter of the Eleusinian mysteries — 'Ceremonies attached to them — » 
Kelation of the Eleusinian teaching to Christian doctrines— Pagan- 
ism a witness to Christianity-— Eleusinian Priesthood, 

My sojourn at Athens was agreeably diversified by expedi- 
tions made in all directions within the neighborhood^ as well 
as by some more distant^ each of which assisted me in under- 
standing what lay before me. The more one sees of Attica^ 
the more one perceives how admirably it was adapted to 
mould and foster the Athenian character. Its picturesque va- 
riety gave a genial impulse to the fancy, which in mountain 
scenery on a more imposing scale might have been over-awed; 
and which the sublime expanse of Asiatic plains would pro- 
bably have overborne with the monotony of mystical reverie. 
Its shallow soil; while it exempted the Athenians from inva- 
sion prompted by cupidity, and thus gave their institutions time 
to develop themselves by a spontaneous and gradual process, 
bound them over also to industry, and severely tasked their 
ingenuity. It compelled them likewise to look on the sea and 
its islands as a part of their domain, and thus engendered not 
only the enterprise, but the spirit of liberty which are among 



'1^ OF GREECE AND TURKEY. 129 

the benefits of commerce and of colonization. An agricultural 
population tends most to revere the prescriptive in institutions, 
a maritime to tempt the untried : the one attaches itself 
chiefly to the aristocratic and the hereditary, the other to the 
popular and the elective principle. It is the marriage of both 
principles which gives birth to order and to freedom, and 
therefore which most favors that expansion of moral energies, 
of which imaginative and intellectual triumphs are the flower 
and the fruit. 

A great importance is likewise to be attached, I suspect, to 
the animating influence of that light and dry air which floats 
over a rocky soil. Milton, celebrating Athens, in that con- 
summate passage of his " Paradise Regained'^ in which the 
kingdoms of the past world pass before his inspired eye (as 
the kingdoms of a future world, seen from the " Specular 
Mount," pass, at the end of '' Paradise Lost," before that of 
the angelic intelligence and the first Man), particularly re- 
marks that its soil was light and its air pure. The fat, rich 
plains of the adjoining Bceotia rewarded the husbandman with 
an ampler prize; and as "prayer and provender'^ are said not 
to hinder each other, it is noticeable that the sacerdotal caste 
as well as the aristocratic, found there its stronghold. Thebes, 
however, if it exiled no great men, produced but few. The dif- 
ference between Bceotia and Attica in soil and climate was 
much like that between Lombardy and Tuscany ; and a cor- 
responding dissimilarity is observable in their fortunes. 

The same niggard soil which stunted the Athenian olives 
disclosed those silver mines in the neighborhood of Sunium, 
the produce of which, raised by the labor of slaves (not citi- 
zens), enabled the Athenians to build and man that fleet which 
conquered Xerxes. Attica contained also in lavish abundance 
those marble quarries to which the sculptor and the architect 
were indebted for their materials. An inexhaustible supply of 



130 PICTURESQUE SKETCHES 

native materials is one of the first requisites for Art^ which, 
without itj will be in danger of remaining ever but an exotic 
and a luxury. Grermany, Eelgium, France, England, in the 
middle ages, raised their cathedrals, for the most part, of the 
stone near at hand, and carved the wood that grew in their 
native forests. If we would again produce anything great we 
must learn to make the best of those materials within our own 
shores which at least do not double the cost of workman- 
ship, and let Carrara rest in peace. At Athens, the best and 
the cheapest materials were found together. 

One of my most interesting expeditions was made to the 
site of the ancient Eleusis, famous in old time for its mys- 
teries. In many places remains are still traced of the road 
thither, which traversed the most beautiful region in the 
neighborhood of Athens, issuing beyond the city walls, into 
that district which contained the monuments of her greatest 
men, winding by the Platonic academy, and crossing the Ce- 
phisus. The scenery through which it passes is eminently 
noble and characteristic. The intensity of light in the south 
is perhaps that which chiefly causes the marked difference be- 
tween the northern and the southern landscape, enlarging, as 
it does indefinitely, the sphere of vision in the latter. The 
amphitheatric breadth of Grrecian scenery is increased by the 
circumstance that the woods commonly consist of olives or 
gome other tree small in growth and undefined in color, and, 
therefore, permit the eye to comprehend without interruption 
the extent of the open plain, and to wander, undiverted, to its 
mountain boundary sharply traced against a purple sky. Not 
only are there few clouds, but there are seldom those vapors 
which give a semi-visionary character to our English land- 
scape; you miss the bloom of that landscape, you miss its 
countless associations, its social allusions impressed by spire, 
manor-house, and cottage, the fair order of fields, the domes- 



OF GREECE AND TURKEY. 131 

ticity of guarded nooks; but you enjoy in the place of these 
an amplitude and majesty of which we know nothing. These 
are especially the characteristics of Attica^ which consists, 
not of valleys, but of twelve wide plains or basins, each en- 
compassed by its mountain walls, and most of them washed 
by the sea. 

I often left the carriage on my way to Eleusis to mount 
an eminence and study the character of Athenian scenery. 
All around me lay a scene grave at once and lovely, and 
glistening in the sunshine with a brilliancy that made me re- 
joice that the predominant growth was not of a kind to re- 
flect the sunbeams more fiercely than the lavender-colored 
thyme. Gazing upon a scene expanded around you like a 
map, your eye is caught here and there by a sparkling vil- 
lage, shining through, not screened by, its vineyards, cypresses, 
and perhaps a few palms; but the stony mountain ridges on 
the horizon no more recall to you the piny and jagged Alps 
than the foreground reminds you of an English pasture, so 
truly " the fat of the land'^ as to be only a degree less animal 
than the herds that roam over it. Neither does the scene 
present anything like the exuberant richness of a Neapolitan- 
landscape, with its gleaming orange-gardens, hedges rough 
with aloe and cactus, thickets of matted shrubs, and odorous 
trees trailed over with convolvolus and cistus. In the Athe- 
nian landscape form is all in all : clearness, vastness, and sim- 
plicity are its main characteristics. There is infinite beauty 
in it, but comparatively little sentiment about it. The 
cloudiest day looks angry, not melancholy, and the sunshine 
pierces the storm. 

It is as you approach Eleusis that you observe traces of that 
ancient road by which, year after year, the statue of Bacchus 
was carried from the Eleusinian temple to Athens and back 
again, with myrtle crown and uplifted torch. In some places. 



3.32 PICTURESQUE SKETCHES 

and especially where the road skirts the sea, the stone pave- 
ment still remains, and stamped in it are the wheelmarks of 
the car that rolled over it 3000 years ago, and many a century 
earlier. On the cliffs close by, marks of the chisel are still 
to be seen, as well as little hollows carved in the rock, the cells 
in which votive offerings were once suspended. Along that road 
passed all the most illustrious of the Hellenic race, and many 
of the chief men (warriors, philosophers, consuls, priests, 
emperors) of Asia, of Africa, and of Rome. The shores of 
the Mediterranean, that Olympic stadium of the ancient world, 
sent thither from Syria to Calpe, as offerings, not gold and 
frankincense, but the rulers to whom they had confided their 
destinies, and the seers by whom their intelligence was directed, 
zealous each and all of them to be initiated into the mysteries 
that gave promise of a future life. There paced Eschylus zeal- 
ous and absorbed, and Horace ready to make the best of all 
chances, provided among their number was neither lance nor 
sword. Eschylus was arraigned before the Areopagus on a 
charge of having partially revealed in one of his tragedies the 
secrets confided to him in the mysteries. What defence he 
made, we know not ; but he might have replied that he was a 
poet, and that that is no poetry through which there sparkle 
out, even in the bard's despite, no flashes of Eleusinian lore. 
He might have added, that the mischief is the less formidable, 
inasmuch as the people are likely to be very little the wiser for 
any such revelations. 

The road increases in beauty as it advances to the west. 
Leaving behind it the plain of Athens, it gradually ascends to 
a considerable height among the Eleusinian mountains, winding 
among broad and picturesque but sterile glens. At the summit 
of the pass you reach the remains of an ancient viaduct, as well 
as those of a large and interesting monastery of Byzantine 
architecture. This spot commands a glorious view of the sea 



OF GREECE AND TURKEY. 133 

close to Eleusis^ the purple expanse being completely shut in 
and framed by mountains. A long but gradual descent brings 
you to the shore, beside which the road extends in a single 
curve, passing through the plain of Eleusis, which is not less 
picturesque than that of Athens. 

The ancient city of Eleusis stood on a gently swelling hill, 
glorious with the many monuments which adorned what may 
be accounted the " Holy City'^ of Grreece — a city which stood to 
it in somewhat of the same relation that ecclesiastical Rome 
stood to medieval Europe. At the eastern extremity of its 
rocky platform rose the far-famed temple of Ceres, the largest 
in G-reece, as well as the most venerable. It presented to the 
south a portico of twelve columns, and four rows of pillars di- 
vided the cella. Like the Parthenon, it, too, had its colon- 
naded Propylea, which stood in advance of its outer court. 
That temple exists no more. How or when it disappeared, 
history keeps no record. Everywhere in Greece one is aston- 
ished and afflicted by the total disappearance of monuments, so 
built that they might have lasted as long as the world lasts. 
What can have occasioned so lamentable a disaster ? Eleusis, 
I believe, was never fortified in modern times : there, then, 
the Turks required no lime for the construction of bastions. 
In many cases, the obliteration has been as complete as if it had 
been effected by magic or some retributive miracle. Our loss, 
however, in this case, as in most others, is not an unmitigated 
loss. The Grecian monuments, like the Sybil's books, have 
become far more precious, because so large a proportion of them 
have been destroyed. 

Eleusis has at least left significant memorials behind it. In 
almost every part of the modern village, I came upon the re- 
mains of ancient walls, consisting of those prodigious blocks 
which the Greeks used in th^ir buildings. On the platform of 
the hill which rises above that village, and commands the 
12 



134 PICTURESQUE SKETCHES 

noblest view of the bay and the mountains around it, are the 
ruins of the temple itself. Not a pillar now stands ; but the 
ground is strewn with fragments of their shafts^ as well as with 
capitals and blocks of the frieze. There can be little doubt 
that large discoveries of sculpture will be found in the neighbor- 
hood of Eleusis, whenever any sufficient search is made. 
Already, indeed, they have filled a ruined church hard by with 
fragments of statues casually discovered in the neighborhood. 
The want of funds is, no doubt, the great obstacle in the way 
of an effectual search. The reverence attached to such remains 
by the common people has, in some instances, been known to 
partake of a superstitious character. On one occasion they 
steadily resisted the removal of a statue of Ceres, affirming 
that its loss might imperil their harvest in future years. 

We can of course discover little in detail of the Eleusiniaa 
mysteries, though we know that the splendid ceremonial in the 
temple, exhibited before the eyes of the initiated, was intended 
to impart in a symbolic form the deepest lessons to which 
ancient theology had attained, to illustrate a mystic philosophy 
of man, of life, and of a life after death, and to dedicate the 
votary to a discipline of purity and virtiie, as a pledge of his 
participation in that immortal life reserved for well-doers. It 
was deemed necessary for all persons to partake of this mystic 
initiation in order to insure their happiness in another world ; 
and one of the charges brought against Socrates was, that' with 
this duty he had never complied. The characters of those who 
presented themselves were severely scrutinized; and those 
charged with various crimes (among others, with homicide, 
though accidental) were excluded. The first day of the cele- 
bration was called by the name of Assemhly, for on it first the 
worshipers were congregated together. The second day was 
called by a name signifying Purijication, the votaries being 
obliged to bathe in the sea. The third day was devoted to 



OF GREECE AND TURKEY. 135 

SacrificCj the priests tliemselves not being permitted on this 
occasion to partake of the sacrificial feast. The fourth day a 
solemn procession took place, in which the Holy Basket of 
Ceres was carried aloft. The fifth was called the Torch-day ; 
and on the night that followed it, people rushed over the hills 
with lighted torches, in memory of the search of Ceres after 
her daughter, and of the torch which she lighted at the flames 
of JEtna. The sixth day was called lacchuSj being especially 
consecrated to the mystic Bacchus (the son of Jupiter and 
Ceres, not the Theban divinity), who had accompanied his 
mother in her wanderings, bearing a torch in his hand, and 
whose statue was on that day carried in procession to Athens. 

On the seventh day of the ceremonial, the votaries partici- 
pated in solemn games, and the reward of the victor was a 
measure of barley, that grain having been sown first at Eleusis. 
The eighth day was called by the name of ^sculapms, the god 
of healing, who, as well as Hercules, had participated in the 
lesser mysteries. The ninth and last day was in its import the 
most deeply significant of all. It was known by the name of 
^'Earthen Vessels/' because on that day two such vessels were 
filled with wine, and placed, one to the east and the other to 
the west in the temple. Mystical words were murmured over 
those vessels, after which they were both thrown down, and 
the wine spilt on the ground was ofi"ered as a libation. 

The Eleusinian mysteries, being intended especially as 
pledges of immortality, were not unnaturally connected with 
the worship of the venerable and beneficent daughter of Saturn 
and Vesta. Her attribute, the blade of corn (the illustration 
used by St. Paul), was expressly held forth to the votary as a 
symbol, in its burial, its decay, and in its regermination, of im- 
mortality. Still more strongly was the second life shadowed 
forth in the tale of Proserpine, daughter of Ceres, who, though 
snatched to the kingdom of Shades, was yet, through Jove's 



136 PICTURESQUE SKETCHES 

permission, restored annually to her mother, and allowed to 
breathe, during half the year, the upper air. In such close 
connection with Proserpine was Ceres contemplated in these 
mysteries that the only name she bore in them was that of 
AxOsia, or the Mourner. I know not whether in any other 
part of Grreek religion there was so close a recognition of the 
divinity of Sorrow. In every part of these mysteries with 
which we are acquainted we find marvelous traces of that Si- 
bylline insight possessed by the ancient world, which the early 
doctors of the church regarded as an inferior sort of inspira- 
tion, accorded in order to prepare the pagan mind for the truth. 
The most remarkable of the allegories which belonged to the 
#-Ji-JEleusinian worship was assuredly that of the broken earthen 
' 'vessels and the wine poured out in oblation, especially if we 
call to mind Bacon's exposition of the earthen vessel in which 
Hercules was said to have crossed the sea — an allusion (as our 
great inductive philosopher asserts) to that frail mansion of the 
flesh, the '^body prepared'' for One who, in the more terrestrial 
aspect of his sacred deeds and sufferings, was prefigured by the 
divine hero, warrior and deliverer Of antiquity. 

There were countless significant allusions in these mysteries, 
or rather in that slight portion of them with which we are ac- 
quainted, which might indeed challenge a deep attention. The 
sacred mysteries were recited to the initiated, after their purifi- 
cation, from a book called nsT'pojita, because it was made of two 
stones fitly joined together. After this instruction, certain in- 
quiries were catechetically made of every man, to which he 
returned answers. The chief hierophant called out with a 
loud voice, commanding the profane to depart, the whole com- 
pany standing at this time in the vestibule of the temple. The 
glorious spectacle in the interior of the temple, which was 
flooded with light, and in which the Eleusinian philosophy of 
heaven and earth was exhibited in vision before the eyes of 



OP GREECE AND TURKEY. 137 

men whose brows the priests had hound with myrtle, in allu- 
sion to the bowers of the Blessed, was called by the name of 
Ai;T'o4ta, or Intuition. During the celebration of the mysteries 
it was forbidden to arrest a debtor or to present any petition. 
In order to abolish on this occasion all distinction between the 
rich and the poor, Lycurgus pronounced it unlawful for any 
one to make his approach to Eleusis in a chariot. The vota- 
ries were not allowed to draw nigh unto the shrine of the 
Mourner, kind to man, and to whom they owed the gift of 
their daily bread, without having under their feet the Ato^ 
xcaZiov, or Jujpiter^s JSkin, that is, the skin of a victim offered 
to the supreme god. Not a little remarkable is it that the 
highest and purest doctrines of Greek mythology should thus, 
in connection with its loftiest hopes, and its most stringent 
moral precepts, have been revealed to the purified, in the tem- 
ple, common and indivisible, of those two divinities, who, in- 
terpreted in their elemental or physical relations, signify bread 
and wine. 

Those who are attached to mystic interpretations will not 
fail to discover an occult meaning in the Eleusinian j)riesthood, 
as well as in the mysteries it celebrated. The chief of that 
priesthood was called Hierophantes, or Revealer of sacred 
things. He was always an Athenian citizen; his office was held 
for life; and he was obliged to live in celibacy, and to devote 
himself wholly to the service of the gods. He was accounted 
a type of the unknown Creator of all things. He had three 
attendants. The first was called Torch-hearer, and considered 
a type of the Sun, the Enlightener, the Slayer of the Serpent, 
the Harmonist, and the Physician. The second, called Herald 
or Crier, was deemed a type of Mercury, the Messenger of 
Heaven, and Interpreter of the Grods, the God of Eloquence 
and Persuasion, who glided through the universe invisible, or 
in any changing shape, with the speed of thought, and con- 

12* 



138 PICTURESQUE SKETCHES 

ducted the Souls to tlieir abodes below. The third, who was 
especially the Ministrant, was called '^ He at the Altar, '^ and 
regarded as a symbol of the Moon— that luminary which some 
of the ancient doctors compared with the Christian churchy 
because it is the lesser Light, ruling the night, and reflecting 
the beams of the Sun of Righteousness. Besides these sacred 
personages, there were others also; among them a onaster of 
the ceremonies, who was always one of the Archons, and four. 
Curators elected by the people. Of these, one was always 
chosen from the sacred family of the Eumolpidge, the descend- 
ants of Eumolpus, by whom the Eleusinian mysteries were in- 
stituted. In this part of the priesthood the hereditary element 
was therefore included, and the chain remained unbroken for 
1200 years. The chief sacrifices offered were a mullet, and a 
little barley severed from the holy soil of Eleusis. 

How are we to account for the extraordinary analogies be- 
tween truth and fiction — between the guesses of the pagan 
intelligence and the Christian Revelation? That is too long 
and too grave a question to be discussed here : one observation, 
however, is so closely connected with the Eleusinia, that it 
need not be suppressed. There are persons who object to many 
things in the ceremonial, the discipline, or the government of 
the Christian church, on the ground that they are analogous 
to much in the pagan rites, and, therefore, probably proceed 
from the same cravings of the unregenerate imagination. 
Such matters may or may not be objectionable; but this argu- 
ment against them, too often inadvertently used, is one which 
would undermine Christianity itself. It is not to Christian 
rites only that we find analogies in ancient religion, but to 
Christian doctrines likewise, and to many of the doctrines in- 
cluded in the creed itself. '^ If the rites are but plagiarisms,'' 
the skeptic will say, " why not the doctrines too ? You dis- 
claim the Eleusinian lustration, and scorn the successive priest- 



OF GREECE AND TURKEY. 139 

hoocl; are you prepared to reject also tlie doctrines emblemed 
in the broken vessels and the wine shed abroad." In all these 
matters there is but one question for a reflecting mind ; namely, 
was the later religion a patchwork of those which had preceded 
it; or were the early religions of the world, on the contrary, 

attempts to feel after a truth congruous with man's nature, and 
intended from the first to be revealed to him ? On all grounds 
of philosophic reasoning, the latter solution seems to be the 
true one; while the former, if fairly analyzed, is about as rea- 
sonable as the Epicurean notion that the world derived its being 
from a concurrence of atoms existing from all time ; that reli- 
gion from the first intended for man was necessarily in harmony 
with man's nature, and the object of man's desire. Whatever 
was deepest in the human heart, and highest in the human 
mind, sympathized with and aspired after that religion, which 
(human only because divine) is the legitimate supplement of 

. human nature, as well as its crown. To infer that Christianity 
is but a combination of human inventions, because it satisfies 
the more elevated human instincts, is about as reasonable as a 
moral philosophy would be which accounted for the maternal 
affection by concluding it to arise from a recollection of the 
pleasure the child had found in her doll, or which supposed 
that human politics had resulted from a minute observation of 
the ant-hill and the bee-hive. That surely is not a sound 
philosophy which, like a concave mirror, inverts the objects 
placed before it, confusing type and antitype, and assuming 
that whatever came first in the order of time comes first also in 
the order of thought and moral reason. 

Whence, then, arose those anticipations, as might seem, of 
many Christian doctrines and practices ? Are they to be con- 
sidered simply as the noblest exertions of the human intellect 
inspired by that moral sense which, however inadequate to sup- 
port our feeble will, has yet been able to maintain itself, and, 



140 PICTURESQUE SKETCHES 

SO far as it goes, runs, in its smaller circle; parallel with reve- 
lation? Or are they traditions — broken fragments of that 
patriarchal religion which preceded the Jewish, and was con- 
nected by it, as by an isthmus, with the Christian ? No doubt 
they are to be referred to both sources. We find remarkable 
traces in the Eleusinian mysteries of traditions later than the 
patriarchal, especially in the history of their supposed founder. 
He lived about a century after the great Hebrew legislator. 

That founder was Eumolpus, son of Neptune and Chione. 
His mother, desirous to conceal his birth, threw the infant into 
the sea ; but his life was preserved by Neptune, who carried 
him into Ethiopia, where he was brought up by an ^Ethiopian 
woman, whose daughter he afterwards espoused. An act of 
violence compelled him to fly from j^thiopia; and he took re- 
fuge in Thrace, the king of which country received him hospi- 
tably, and gave him his daughter in marriage. After conspir- 
ing against his father-in-law, he was once more obliged to fly, 
and found an asylum in Attica, where he was initiated in the 
sacred rites of Ceres, and constituted Hierophantes, in the year 
B. C. 1356. Having been reconciled to his father-in-law, he 
inherited his kingdom, and thus united in his person the royal 
and the sacerdotal office. Erechtheus was at that time king of 
Attica. Between him and the great high-priest of Eleusis 
there gradually arose that jealousy which from the time of the 
Judean kingdom to the Papal has so often divided the civil and 
ecclesiastical powers. They met in battle, and both were slain. 
Peace was concluded on the terms that the royal office should 
ever remain in the family of Erechtheus, and the sacerdotal in 
that of Eumolpus. The kingly power ceased with Codrus in 
less than 300 years from the time of that treaty : the priest- 
hood remained with the Eumolpidae for 1200 years. The 
Eleusinian mysteries themselves lasted for about ISOO^ears. 
In the reign of Adrian, the ritual was transferred from Eleusis 
to Rome. It was abolished by Theodosius the Great. 



OF GREECE AND TURKEY. 141 



CHAPTER X. 

THE PEIREUS— ATHENS. 

The Peireus — Disappearance of the ancient fortifications — Incomplete- 
ness of History — Ruined temple near the Peireus — Tomb of Themi- 
stocles— Greek politics — Small progress which the nation has made — 
Greek education — Mr, Hill — An Athenian school — Greek hymns and. 
music — A Philhellenist — The modern language — its relations with 
the ancient — Advantages which modern Greece may derive from her 
ancient literature — Benefit from select study. 

There are few things in the neighborhood of Athens more 
worthy of note than the harbor of the Peireus, and the two 
adjoining ports, with which Athens was united by the lines of 
fortification executed under the rule of Themistocles and of 
Pericles. Along the line of coast, which, including its inden- 
tations, extends for about six miles, considerable remains exist 
of the ancient walls and towers. Like most Athenian ruins, 
they consist of huge blocks of stone put together without 
cement, and consolidated by their own weight only. Unfor- 
tunately, but little care has been taken of these interesting 
remains, many parts of which have supplied materials for recent 
buildings. There is still, however, traced a continuous mass 
of wall along the margin of the sea, and within the peninsula, 
connecting the most easterly bay with the ^'long walls ^^ of 
Themistocles. The ancient town of the Peirseus extended over 
the whole space between the inner wall and the sea, as well as 
round the harbor which retains the name. It was as popu- 
lous as Athens itself, and may be considered as part of the 



142 PICTUREfeQUE SKETCHES 

same city ; for between the walls by wbich tbe two were joined; 
it is probable that there was a succession of houses. 

The total fortifications of Athens must have been about 
twenty-two miles in length. The scale on which they were 
built we may infer from what we read of the walls of Themi- 
stocles, which were five miles long each, sixty feet high, twenty 
broad, and five hundred apart from each other. How marvel- 
ous that such walls should ever have disappeared, and how 
plainly does not the ignorance under which we labor concern- 
ing the causes which led to the overthrow of monuments, the 
subversion of which must have cost more persevering industry 
than the subversion of many a kingdom has done, demonstrate 
the fragmentary as well as the illusory character of that muse- 
indited newspaper — History. The history of the ancient world 
may, perhaps, one day be written. Every little discovery of 
medal or coin supplies us with materials which those who come 
after us will know how to apply, each in its place : and the 
mere lapse of time cannot be deemed of paramount importance 
in the matter, considering the extreme difficulty with which we 
ascertain the truth respecting occurrences not a year old. Phi- 
losophers assure us that a man never finally forgets anything 
which he has known ; and that all that has been swept by the 
current of daily life into some odd angle of the soul is sure to 
make its appearance again. The human race, also, doubtless 
will be allowed to recover the lore it has lost, and to contem- 
plate, from a height, that course— -so erratic, so broken, so often 
retrograde — which it has traced during its sojourn on this planet. 
In the mean time, the traveler in the East is constantly reminded 
of the fact that countless events, as wonderful as those recorded 
by the chronicler, must have taken place on ground with the 
annals of which it pleases us to fancy ourselves familiar. If 
we encountered a city in the Punjaub girt with such fortifica- 
tions as those of Athens, should we think it necessary, for our 



OF GREECE AND TURKEY. 143 

own security, so completely to destroy them that the traveler 
should grope for their site with a map in his hand ? Should we 
not think of the expense first ? To have obliterated the walls 
of Babylon must have cost more labor than to have built the 
metropolis of many a modern nation. Yet in our compendious 
views of history, we think it sufficient to say, " The city being 
taken, its fortifications were dismantled, in order to render future 
resistance impossible.^' 

Whoever can content himself with trivial remains of great 
things will, notwithstanding, be interested by the fragments of 
the "long walls," as well as of the. towers by which they were 
strengthened at intervals. On a promontory that projects into 
the sea, there are also ruins of a temple without name or his- 
tory. To the height of six feet, some of the pillars, which are 
not fluted, remain erect; and portions of the'iothers lie scattered 
around. It is not surprising that this temple should have given 
way; for its base is hardly raised above the level of the sea, 
which rushes, blue and green, up to its feet, and drenches in 
showers of rain-bow-misted foam its dark and rifted shafts. 

Close to this temple remains what is called, and justly, we 
may guess, if the account given by Pausanias is to be relied 
on, the tomb of Themistocles. It consists merely of an oblong 
hollow carved out of the rock, and lapped against by the sea, 
which it engulfs with a complacent, half-plausive sound. A 
legend, if no more authentic tradition clung to the spot, would 
more probably have called it the bath of a Nereid than the grave 
of a hero. Notwithstanding, the Athenians, who understood 
what was decorous and fit, did well in interring their great 
statesman by the element he had loved and over which he had 
given them the mastery. They had exiled him, it is true, but 
not until they had allowed him, what probably he chiefly desired, 
a sphere for his greatness, and the means of serving his country. 

Igp.or.int and petulant censors, and some of a better class, 



144 PICTURESQUE SKETCHES 

are moved overmuch by the petulant and ignorant ingratitude 
of the people towards their benefactors. Benefits which have 
been felt by the poor at their hearths are commonly not for- 
gotten, and are never resented; for these come home to the 
individual being, and of these the motive is seldom open to 
misconstruction. Benefits of a larger kind afiect the masses of 
the people ; but as the masses, be they grateful or ungrateful, 
possess neither the corporate existence and continuity of a 
nation, nor the personal life of an individual, so they should 
sustain an inferior responsibility. A statesman worthy of 
serving his country will think that the people have acquitted 
themselves well by him if they have allowed him to serve it. 
If fame be anything, a great man's reverse is that whi<3h crowns 
his fame, and marks him with blight and blast apart from the 
crowd of the pro^erous. The greater is not blessed of the 
lesser. Themistocles had saved his country and brought down 
the pride of Xerxes. What more could his countrymen have 
done for him (more for themselves they might have done) than 
to have allowed his bones to repose in his native land? 

Not far from the tomb of Themistocles a monument has 
been erected to the Grreek Admiral Miaulis, for his merits in 
the late war of independence. It stands close to that plain 
which is memorable from the defeat of the Greek forces under 
Lord Cochrane and General Church. To any one who ex- 
amines the ground, their defeat is explicable enough; in a large 
measure it is attributed to the chivalrous impetuosity of Lord 
Cochrane, who, notwithstanding, is said to have displayed ex- 
traordinary talents in the war. The Greeks were originally in 
possession of the heights, but were induced or forced to relin- 
quish this advantage by Lord Cochrane, who was tired of inaction 
and had resolved to eat his dinner on the Acropolis, at that 
time closely besieged. Without cavalry to oppose to that of 
the Turks, and without bayonets to resist their charge, the 



OP GREECE AND TURKEY. 145 

native forces, which numbered about 12,000, were broken 
almost at once on advancing to the plain, and driven back with 
great slaughter, several of them swimming to the ships. 

The state of society at Athens has in it much to interest 
those who are not exclusively dependent on social convention- 
alities. In its small compass you meet representatives of most 
countries in the east as well as the west; while the native popu- 
lation, in the midst of their unchangeable monuments, are 
obviously, both as to character and manners, in a state of 
transition as rapid as could have characterized a Grreek colony 
in old times. How long the present order of things may last 
no one can guess, nor whether it will be succeeded by a better 
or a worse. Hitherto, Greece has made small progress as a 
nation compared with what was expected : how far those san- 
guine expectations were reasonable is another question. That 
want of progress is attributed by one party to the early lack of 
popular privileges, and by another to a deficiency of executive 
vigor. In the mean time, it is certain that privileges are con- 
ducive to the public good, simply in proportion to the honesty 
and virtue which can be called in for their exercise; and equally 
certain that a strong hand should be a steady and a just one. 
To a young country especially may be applied the well-known 
adage on the subject of forms of government, '^whiche'er is 
best administered is best.^^ Whether the government originally 
instituted in modern G-reece had been an absolute or a constitu- 
tional monarchy, or a republic, it would have equally amounted 
to the trial of an experiment without precedent in ancient 
Greek history, in which we read of no form of centralization, 
but of states politically independent, municipally self-governed, 
•and united by a very slight bond of confederation, but by 
strong ties of race, religion, language, and manners. 

Whether it would have been possible to have again tried the 
experiment of antiquity, who can say? Who can tell whether 
13 



146 PICTURESQUE SKETCHES 

the system of ancient G-reece would have worked well of old, 
if, instead of having grown up spontaneously, it had heen the 
result of an external arrangement made by foreign nations? 
Who indeed can guess whether in any case it could then have 
succeeded, if Greece, instead of being girt around by compara- 
tive barbarians, and thus consolidated into a practical unity, 
had been surrounded by nations who had outstripped her in 
civilization, each of whom would have vied with the others in 
a policy of intermeddling, and the most aggressive of whom 
was the only one connected with her by a common religion? 
Be this, however, as it may, I hardly understand what reason 
the more sanguine Philhellenists had to entertain those lofty 
expectations which have confessedly been disappointed. In the 
settlement of the Greek kingdom there was one "original sin." 
Unfortunately, Greece had not been able to work out her inde- 
pendence by her own unassisted energies. This circumstance 
was in itself a proof that she was not yet in all respects ripe 
for independence, although the struggle itself had doubtless 
done something to prepare her for it. As a necessary conse- 
quence, a government was prescribed for her by the states which 
had given her, as they supposed, her liberty — 

" A gift of that which is not to be given 
By all the blended Powers of Earth and Heaven." 

A nation, however, like a poet, "nascitur non fit." Those 
who give on such occasions seldom know how to give good 
gifts; and those who receive seldom know how to work good 
out of evil, or even to use good without abusing it. Greece 
must have patience, and her destinies will shape themselves 
according to her internal needs, of which she probably knows 
about as little as her advisers. If I order a coat of a tailor 
who never saw me, I must not expect to be perfectly fitted, and 
have some reason to be contented if I can keep it on my back. 



OF GREECE AND TURKEY. 147 

Every beast in tlie forest has a coat that fits him ; but then he 
is at the trouble of growing it. 

I took but little interest when at Athens in those petty dis- 
putes and jealousies of the ''Russian party/' the "English 
party," and the ''French party/' which are dignified by the 
name of Greek politics. I saw no reason to imagine that 
Greece had yet graduated sufficiently in that severely practical 
thing — a political education — to possess any politics : I doubted 
even whether her parties were quite worthy of the name of 
parties, and I felt pretty well convinced that the petty lore of 
her factions was much too complex for a foreigner to under- 
stand. This circumstance is fortunate for you as it was for me. 
Having picked up no gossip I have none to retail. If you 
want the last report or the most recent scandal, you will find 
them best and freshest in a newspaper. Greek politics are 
stale in a week, for no large principles are involved in them. 
If you do not drink the milk warm from the coW; you must 
have a credulous palate to enjoy it. 

Greek politics, being in reality a question of the future, not 
of the present, will depend mainly on Greek education. For 
knowledge, the Greek have an ardent thirst, like the Irish; 
and their apprehension is so quick that they can master in a 
few months what others would require years to learn. What- 
ever amount of progress they may one day reach, they will 
always have cause to look back with gratitude to the efibrts 
made on their behalf by Mr. Hill, an American missionary of 
the Episcopal church, who was, I believe, one of the earliest 
settlers at Athens, and to whom the cause of education there 
probably owes more than to any one else. Mr. Hill came to 
Athens as a missionary— directly, of civilization and sound 
morals — indirectly, of course, of religion also. He early per- 
ceived the futility of all attempts to withdraw the Athenians 
from their own church, and was also too orthodox to endeavor 



148 PICTURESQUE SKETCHES 

to create a schism in a communion in whicli all the great truths 
of Christianity are maintained, in combination with the ancient 
ritual and ministry, though also in combination with many 
superstitions, the result of much ignorance. Accordingly, for 
years he devoted himself to the great cause of education. The 
clergy did not prohibit their flocks from reading the Holy 
Scriptures, or from receiving religious instruction on subjects 
not controversial. His influence soon became great, and as- 
suredly has been beneficent. 

I visited, with equal surprise and satisfaction, an Athenian 
school which contained 700 pupils, taken from every class of 
society. The poorer classes were gratuitously instructed in 
reading, writing, and arithmetic, and the girls in needlework 
likewise. The progress which the children had made was very 
remarkable ; but what particulaly pleased me was that air of 
bright alertness, and good-humored energy, which belonged to 
them, and which made every task appear a pleasure, not a 
toil. The greatest punishment which can be inflicted on an 
Athenian child is exclusion from school, though but for a day. 
About seventy of the children belonged to the higher classes, 
and were instructed in music, drawing, the modern languages, 
the ancient Grreek, and geography. Most of them were at the 
moment reading Herodotus and Homer. I have never seen 
children approaching them in beauty ; and was much struck 
by their Oriental cast of countenance, their dark complexions, 
their flashing eyes, and that expression at once apprehensive 
and meditative, which is so much more remarkable in children 
than in those of a more mature age. 

The singularity of the spectacle was increased by the mingled 
character of enjoyment and decorum that belonged to it. The 
dresses of the children, many of which were of the national 
costume, looked as spotless as their pale radiant faces, and as 
carefully arranged as their hair,, which was almost always dark, 



OF GEEEOE AND TURKEY. 149 

and glistening in its heavy masses. Their gestures were eager 
at once and graceful, and their demeanor was full of reverence. 
Never have I seen such brows, and such nobly-shaped heads. 
These are, perhaps, the highest characteristics of Greek beauty ; 
but they are especially observable in children, and give them 
a certain rapt and inspired air. As I walked among them, I 
could hardly help asking " which is to be the future Pindar ? 
That girl, does she not come from Tanagra : does she not boast 
that Thermodon is clearer than Ilissus ; and is not her name 
Corinna ?'' Many of these children spoke English, and con- 
versed eagerly about their studies. One of them in particular, 
a beautiful orphan from Crete, adopted by an American lady, 
to whom the Athenians owe much, expatiated, with brighten- 
ing eyes, and a fciirer dawn of intelligence on her brow, about 
the pleasure she had had in reading Plato ! Some of their 
drawings seemed to me to indicate much genius; and there is 
no branch of their education which they enjoy so much. Their 
singing master was an old Greek, who had passed many years 
in Germany, but who abated nothing of his vivacity on that 
account If he was as dry as a cricket, he was as merry like- 
wise. This old man seemed, indeed, to Kave gathered a double 
portion of his country's vivacity from the abundance of youth- 
ful life around him, and was never tired of singing among his 
pupils, whose confidence he had plainly won, and who clustered 
about him like birds upon a sunny old fruit-tree half bare. 

I was asked to come again on Sunday evening, and attend 
their devotions, which are of a very musical character — an 
invitation that I did not require to be repeated. Before I 
had reached the threshold, a loud, clear chaunt from the 
upper part of the building struck upon my ear. Guided by 
the sound, I made my way easily to the " upper chamber,'^ 
which they used as their chapel. A little girl advanced to 
meet me, with a frank courtesy, and placed in my hand, with 



150 PICTURESQUE SKETCHES 

the ready smile of a child's hospitality^ a G^reek prayer-hook^ 
open at the place where they were engaged. It was a prayer 
from one of those old Grreek liturgies^ which rank among the 
grandest of human compositions. The prayer concluded^ the 
infantine congregation rose and chanted in Grreek the whole of 
the Te Deum. If the legend be true which attrihutes to St. 
Ambrose and St. Augustine that hj^mn which so marvelously 
combines the Creed, the Psalm, and the Prayer — if it be 
true that, at the baptism of the latter, the two saints were 
seized with a common impulse, and recited that hymn, com- 
posing it as they proceeded, in alternate verses — they might 
have recognized an exultation not less fervent than that 
which they had themselves felt, if they had heard it chanted 
by that youthful and jubilant choir. The passion of the 
south is a glorious thing when it is worthily directed- — it is 
then a light that illumines the intellect, and a searching heat 
that makes purity more pure. I well understood, on that oc- 
casion, why it is that in those lands where, commonly, plea- 
sure is too eagerly pursued, sanctity has also reached its highest 
elevation, building, like the eagle, its nest on the summit of 
the mountain walls whose base is hidden in myrtles. 

Impassioned exultation was the chief characteristic of the 
song caroled by those dark-eyed cherubs. The nightingales 
in the mystic grove of Colonos, which allayed the heart and 
sounded the requiem of the blind king about to find rest at 
last in the Shades, had neither so impetuous nor so solemn 
a note. Certainly those children sang to God, and not merely 
^^ to the praise and glory of God, part of the 119th Psalm.'' 
In this respect their anthem illustrated what everything in 
G-reece reminds us of, the extreme objectivity of the Greek 
character. Nothing human, however, is perfect, and I must 
add that there was occasionally not a little harshness in the 
music, owing to its extreme loudness and to the fact that those 



OF GREECE AND TURKEY. 161 

youthful voices were not mellowed by the intermixture of any 
graver tones. 

Among the benefactors whom the Greeks will long have 
reason to remember is a Scotch gentleman^ of the name of 

M . He visited Greece first as a Philhellenist, and 

practiced, at Athens, as a lawyer, for some years after the in- 
dependence. At first he was Attorney-General at Athens; 
but he did not sympathize sufficiently with the politics of the 
Government to make it desirable for him to retain that post. 
For a considerable period he used to plead in the Greek courts, 
speaking the language with as much facility as the natives, 
with whom he was deservedly a favorite. His efi'orts for 
their improvement were chiefly of a literary character. At 
one time he established a periodical work at Athens, and pub- 
lished also translations from some of our orators and preach- 
ers. The latter are interesting specimens of the degree in 
which the modern Greek may be made to approximate to the 
ancient, composed as they are with a skilful adaptation of the 
ancient grammar to the genius of the modern language. 

It is the opinion of many persons, better qualified to ex- 
press one than I can be, that the Greek language may one 
day be brought back to somethiug not unlike what it was 
in old times. As for the pronunciation, they stoutly maintain 
that such as it is now it can be proved to have been in the 
time of Constantino, and that it probably was never very dif- 
ferent. It is difficult to determine what may originally have 
been the sound of the vowels; and as for the quantity of the 
syllables, a musical recitative may have assisted the reciter of 
Greek poetry over metrical difficulties which to us would seem 
insurmountable. I can hardly, however, regard the restoration 
of the ancient language as a thing possible; nor is there 
much reason to think that, even if possible, it would be de- 
sirable. The early literature cannot in its own way be rivaled, 



152 PICTURESQUE SKETCHES 

and would only be vulgarized if its language were parodied. 
What the Greeks should aspire after is the complete purifica- 
tion of the modern language, and the gradual building up of 
a literature as analogous to the ancient as Italian literature is 
to the Latin. 

I was glad to find that, in all the schools, the study of the 
ancient languages was much attended to. The modern tongue 
has been much improved by the weeding out of Turkish and 
Italian words, and by the partial restoration of ancient forms 
of construction. Fortunately, the Glreeks possess no grammar 
except the ancient, a knowledge of which is thus rendered 
absolutely necessary for the educated. It remains to be seen 
whether the different genius of ancient and modern times, and 
a corresponding moral diversity in mind and character, have 
not introduced insuperable obstacles to the restoration of the 
classical idiom, I have my misgivings on this subject ; for 
language is assuredly a growth from character, moulded to it as 
the bark to the tree ; and all nations have undergone a cer- 
tain mysterious change of character (a change, probably, pro- 
duced by degrees, but yet amounting to a change of type,) the 
progress of which, if we could trace it, would be among the 
most interesting problems of history. If it were not for this 
inner and moral change, the modern Greek would be, as com- 
pared with the ancient, not a distinct tongue so much as a cor- 
rupt dialect. In its vocabulary, it is as like the old Greek as 
our modern English is like that of Chaucer's time. The Greek 
Liturgy will be of incalculable use in the education of the 
people, bridging over, as it does, the interval between the 
ancient and the modern languages ; and ever}^ Greek will soon, 
we may hope, be able to read the New Testament in the 
original. 

In speculating on the future fortunes of the Greek race, it is 
impossible not to form high hopes from considerations con- 



OF GREECE AND TURKEY. 153 

nected with their language. Whether or not the modern 
hinguage can be as nearly assimilated to the ancient as sanguine 
persons hope, it is certain that the whole community will be 
intimately acquainted with both. The mastery of two lan- 
guages is not a difficult achievement for a community, as has 
long since been proved by the examples of Ireland, the Swiss 
cantons, and other countries ; and the Greeks have too much 
reverence for their forefathers to remain unfamiliar with their 
tongue. What then may we not expect when that race, which 
possesses probably the largest abilities of all European races, 
are thus brought into contact at once with the noblest of lan- 
guages, and the noblest of literatures ? Their advantage will 
not consist merely in possessing close at hand, and entwined 
with their most cherished associations, the highest models in 
almost every species of composition ) they are yet more fortu- 
nate in the selectness of their literature. Their classics will 
not be pushed out of sight, as ours so often are, not only by 
a crowd of works obviously ephemeral and worthless, and 
from which, therefore, all who have better taste, or any care 
for the culture of their minds, may be supposed to recoil ; but 
also by multitudes of books of higher pretensions — the quasi- 
classics. Among us the wood is shut out by the trees; philoso- 
phy is hidden from us by the philosophers 3 and when we would 
pay our vows in the temples of poetry, the roads are so crowded 
with guides (for the most part servants out of livery), that we 
cannot push our way through the press. From this great evil 
the Grreeks will be exempt for many a year. There will be 
nothing to prevent them from reading Plato and Aristotle till 
they understand them ', ^schylus and Sophocles till they know 
them by heart ; Homer till he enters like a burning fire into 
their souls ; and Demosthenes until his " winged words" have 
woven a vesture for their spirits, which will lift them up, like 



154 PICTURESQUE SKETCHES 

the divinely-wrouglit armor of Achilles, and bear them over 
the battle-fields of life. 

And thus the essential spirit of letters may be theirs without 
their being crammed with books. It is hard to say whether 
the intellect suffers most from the lack of food, or from the in- 
digestion that follows excess. Even men of large abilities are 
rendered mentally inefficient and valueless, if their minds are 
filled up with the thoughts of other men, a misfortune that fre- 
quently happens to those who possess a memory disproportion- 
ately large when compared with their other faculties. In the 
acquisition of knowledge a proportion should be observed be- 
tween what a man can take in, and what he can carry without 
impediment to free movement ; otherwise the sluggish sage will 
lie by as useless as a boa constrictor that has lately swallowed 
a stag, and has the horns still sticking out of his jaws. Such 
men may talk like an encyclopaedia, but they will add little to 
the stores of original thought. Among them, the lively Greek 
will not soon be numbered. 

He will also, if he wisely keeps as much as he may to the 
stores of his ancient literature, be delivered from another still 
greater evil than that proceeding from a superfluity of books. 
He will not have his mind distracted, and his moral energies 
weakened by the multitudinous counter-influences, which assail 
the unfortunate student of modern literature. Our modern 
writers are heirs of all that have gone before them ) but the in- 
heritance being too large and somewhat heterogeneous, each 
author contents himself with occupying a portion of it, and 
letting the rest run into waste. The consequence of this is, 
that as diflferent writers draw their influences from the most 
alien sources, the recent literature of every nation is a sort of 
Eolian cavern in which winds from all regions are in perpetual 
conflict, and the most energetic forces avail nothing, because 
no two of them tend one way. The Greek, in short, will have, 



OF GREECE AND TURKEY. 155 

if he does not throw away his advantage, the inestimable bene- 
fit of at once the best and most select literature. Fortunate 
will he be if to this he adds no other reading besides that of 
those few palmary writers in each modern language, who may 
be considered to constitute the indigenous Bible — the Booh — of 
the several nations to which they respectively belong. 



156 PICTURESQUE SKETCHES 



CHAPTER XI, 

JOURNEY FROM ATHENS TO NAUPLIA. 

Lazaretto at the PeireuS'— Greek guardianos=~-An old Frenchman-~=>Saii 
I to Epidaurus-~-Ancient character and scenery of Epidaurus— Ride 
from Epidaurus to Nauplia— Extraordinary vegetation — Remarkable 
sunset— Gulf of Nauplia — its fortifications-— Memorials of Venice— 
the adieus of my French friend— Good fortune in picking up a tra- 
veling servant. 

Wishing to visit Congtantinople before I completed my tour 
in Grreece, that I might have the more settled weather of ad- 
vanced spring for my rambles through that country, I left 
Athens soon after my expeditions to Marathon and Eleusis. 
In order to preserve the continuity of my Greek tour, it may, 
perhaps, be better to postpone that portion of my narrative 
which relates to the farther East, until I have detailed the par- 
ticulars of my visit to the Morea and to Delphi. On my re- 
turn from Constantinople, I renewed my acquaintance with 
G-reece through the disagreeable intervention of a quarantine — 
an infliction to which all travelers in the East are obliged to 
submit. 

I was fortunate in my Lazaretto at the Peireus. Liberty, 
of course, I had not; but I had the best substitutes for it — 
abundance of books, and a climate so fresh and sweet that every 
breath of air seemed to waft with it pleasant recollections of 
the brakes and bowers it had been disturbing. The year had 
advanced since my departure, but not sufficiently to call up 



OF GREECE AND TURKEY. 157 

those summer heats and sandflies which are the chief grievance 
a resident in Athens complains of. Every evening I saw the 
sun setting over the Bay of Salamis^ and watched the waves, 
tinted with crimson, bound up against the tomb of Themisto- 
cles, and run slantingly along the ruined fortifications which 
still remain, his more authentic monument. The space allowed 
me for exercise was not very liberal, consisting as it did of a 
small court covered with broken stones, and a flagged terrace 
along the sea, extending in front of our prison. The confine- 
ment would have been more monotonous if the spot had been 
an inland one; but the variety of sea and sky is great; and who- 
ever watches the lights and shades on the one, while he studies 
the clouds in the other, will discover that in Nature's great 
book there are countless pages which he has never had time to 
turn over, and with which he can never be more than super- 
ficially acquainted. 

We landed late, were tumbled into the Lazaretto, and told 
to take possession of whatever rooms we pleased. They were 
all much alike, and my choice did not occupy much time. They 
were, however, altogether without furniture, and each person 
had to hire what he wanted. Never before did I know that I 
needed so many things; and as often as my messenger came 
back I found that some trifle was still deficient. We were also 
obliged to hire two old men, guardianos, whose primary office, 
far from being that of protecting us, was to shoot us in case 
we attempted to make our escape ! Fortunately, the charge 
was moderate, and we did not put them to the trouble of exe- 
cuting the more painful part of their duty. These men, though 
more than eighty years old, retained all the vivacity of their 
country, and many a time during the day I heard them pursu- 
ing each other in the court or corridor, pulling- each other by 
the ears, or playing off practicak jokes at each other's expense. 
One of them laughed much on observing the infinite trouble I 
14 



158 PICTURESQUE SKETCHES 

had in ascertaining what articles of furniture I required, and 
came to my assistance, assuring me that he knew exactly all I 
needed. Acknowledging at once a superior genius, I submit- 
ted, and went to bed. Even then his attentions did not cease. 
He procured for me a pillow, and a second counterpane, in case 
the early morning should be cold — tucked the bed-clothes in 
carefully — looked at me once more — said, "Adesso yi manca 
solamente la moglie I" and shuffled off before the good-humored 
smile had vanished from his old face. 

Day after day the attentions of my two old friends never 
flagged. They overflowed with that southern good nature which 
consists in gratifying every one in his own way. My ways, T 
could perceive, surprised them ; but they betrayed no intole- 
rance on that account. They were much astonished at my pac- 
ing up and down by the sea half the night, lying in bed after 
sunrise, and taking no siesta; but they evidently considered 
these strange habits to arise from some necessity that probably 
affected all my nation equally. Still more surprised were they 
at my leaving the details of my dinner to the discretion of the 
cook who supplied it; and to a yet greater degree by my re- 
maining nearly the whole day alone. Whatever my inclination, 
however, might be, they were always ready to comply with it, 
and generally eager to anticipate it. Observing that I wrote 
much they brought me, unasked, as many goose- quills as would 
have been sufficient to plume the wings of another Icarus, had 
I desired to soar beyond my prison walls. Towards the latter 
part of my imprisonment their attentions increased, and I soon 
discovered that the less trouble I took the more certain I was 
to be supplied with all I could desire. I was unable to account 
for the extreme attention and kindness which they showed me, 
and for that affection and respect which, as I was assured by 
my fellow-prisoners, they always expressed for me. Not a lit- 
tle vain was I of the conquest I had so unwittingly made; nor 



OF GREECE AND TURKEY. 159 

was it till wc were on the point of departure that the mystery 
was cleared up — and that not in a ruanner the most flattering. 
The fact was that, after much thought, and many consultations, 
they had arrived at the conclusion that I was an idiot. This 
conviction was based upon two circumstances ; first, that I spent 
nearly all my time reading or writing ', and, secondly, that I did 
not eat oil with my salad. It was this estimate of me which 
had not only doubled their charitable attentions, but also con- 
ciliated for me an unbounded veneration. The only drawback 
was, that several times each day the two old men came to my 
window, flattening against the glass their wrinkled and smiling 
faces, leaning each his arm on the shoulder of the other, and 
staring at me for about twenty minutes on each occasion. 

I had but two companions in my captivity. One of them 
was a grave, determined-looking man, by birth half English 
and half Swiss, who spent his time meditating on some specu- 
lative improvements he had undertaken on a property which 
he possessed in G-reece. The other was a little old Frenchman, 
with bright eyes, a shrill voice, and a weather-beaten face, 
puckered into more wrinkles than the skin of a shriveled 
apple in winter, who passed his days questing about the courts 
and inquiring into everything, drinking coffee, shrugging his 
shoulders, lifting his eyebrows, making rapid generalizations on 
all that he saw, ventilating aphorisms, and imagining number- 
less untried modes of cooking macaroni. Economy seemed to 
be his great passion, and as soon as he had done everything 
imaginable to abate ^^the inflammation of his weekly bills,'^ he 
began to extend the same kind offices to me, and insisted upon 
managing everything on my behalf, so that I was spared all 
trouble whatsoever. He took indeed as much care of my pocket 
as if he had intended to pick it the moment we were out of the 
Lazaretto — an action, however, which I dare say he would 
have been as far from committing as any one in the world. 



160 PICTURESQUE SKETCHES 

His assiduity arose simply from the circumstance that he had 
nothing else with which to allay the impatience of a feverish 
temperament^ and a mind^ the restlessness of which was not 
abated by age. If his bones had been all whalebone, his skin 
India rubber (flesh he had none), and his blood quicksilver, he 
could not have been more incessantly active. He seemed ever 
eager and never earnest, as if the passions, dried up in 
him, had left him to a fancy something more than ebullient, 
and to an understanding whose energies were always "on 
wires.^' How often did I not hear the little man wrangling 
with the cook through the gratings of our courtyard, about my 
bill, ready to spit fire at him if there was an overcharge for 
pepper. Then he would come to my room, knock at the door, 
enter with a brisk bow and inflamed wrinkles, lay the bill on 
the table, and sstj, " My maxim is, that it takes three Gi-reeks 
to make one Jew ! Hardly would they leave a tooth in your 
head if it arrived to you to be caught napping. Certainly I 
have been sent for your salvation. It is Telemachus and Mentor 
over again. Adieu I I must see about the coffee, or they will 
burn it. They are very capable of burning it if my eye is off 
them for a minute. Ten times a day do I call them one couple 
of apes in their dotage. Adieu, monsieur! Your Swiss friend 
lose much by his grand speculation : he takes no advice ; his 
hand big enough to keep his pocket empty." 

It was chiefly at dinner that I met my companions, and as 
two out of the three were somewhat taciturn, it was fortunate 
that the third was able to talk enough for us all. He inquired 
much about my travels, considering them, however, simply in 
a pecuniary point of view. "How much did they demand?" 
was always his question, and when I had mentioned what I 
had paid, up went the eyebrows and shoulders, down went the 
corners of the mOuth, and sometimes even down went the knife 
and fork, as he exclaimed "Voila! twice — three times — Mon 
Dieu ! four times too much !" In return he gave us a long 



OP GREECE AND TURKEY. 161 

account of bis adventures during a sojourn of many years in 
the east, the chief result of which appeared to be that be had 
stored up an inexhaustible supply of maxims, by which what- 
ever be did was determined. He had a farm in Greece, by 
which be made nothing, owing, as be affirmed, to the ignorance 
and stupidity of bis neighbors. Notwithstanding be became 
rich by economy; for it was his maxim that money was more 
easily kept than made. Many years before he carried off a 
Turkish woman from Constantinople. He had also married 
her; for, as he said, ^'Why not? She made a very good wife. 
As for her religion, it was a rule with him not to interfere in 
such matters. His maxim was that the feminine department 
of every household was best left to the women. She might 
turn Christian if she liked it. Why not ?" Everything excited 
this practical philosopher, and nothing agitated him. On my 
mentioning that I intended to travel in the Morea, his reply 
was, "The robbers will cut off your nose and ears — ^just band 
me the mustard— they will treat you as they did my son, who 
had the misfortune to be assassinated by them two months ago : 
— What execrable mustard : he shall not put it into his bill I" 
The little old man was as hard as if be had been beaten out of 
old nails, and yet not without good-natured impulses. 

After passing but a single day at Athens (our captivity over), 
and visiting the Acropolis once more, I set out on an expedition 
to Epidaurus, Nauplia, and the ancient Argos. At the Peireus 
I procured a boat without difficulty, and set sail, my old French 
friend traveling with me as far as Nauplia. A favorable 
breeze arched out our sail, and the little boat ran, with a plea- 
sant murmur, though the smooth and shining water, its garru- 
lous babble for the most part accompanied by another sound as 
unceasing, the chatter of my companion, who seldom ceased 
speaking, except to take snuff. Ere many hours had gone by 
we had left Salamis on our right, Egina on our left, and the 

14* 



162 PICTURESQUE SKETCHES 

mountains of Epidanrus began to define their outlines. That 
night we had to sleep as well as we could in the open boat. 
The next morning we found ourselves in a bay clasped bj 
mountains, which sloped steeply down to the sea in every 
direction except one. That exception was the entrance to a 
long and sinuous valley, which, though level with the water, 
appeared, from the shadow that slanted across its remotest end, 
to wind downward with a soft descent. Its short and dusky 
grass was still gray with the morning dew ; but the sun, which 
had risen as we landed, struck with reflected beams its western 
rocks, near their marble portals^ and flashed upon a few stunted 
pines that plumed its crags. 

The glories of Epidaurus are past away. While the triumphs 
of military as of religious architecture remains still in many 
parts of Greece, no vestige is found of the city dedicated to the 
Power who presided over the healing art. The region of Epi- 
daurus was consecrated to ^sculapius, the son of Apollo and 
the nymph Coronis, because it was on one of its mountains 
that the child, exposed there by its mother, was found by a 
herdsman, attracted to him by the golden beams which played 
about his head, and shone through grass and fern, as a she- 
goat of the flock suckled the infant. His temple was one of 
the largest in Greece, and under its protection,, and the influence 
of a salubrious climate, innumerable establishments for the 
infirm gathered around. To these were added, by degrees, 
all that the sick or the idle need to amuse ' them — theatres, 
places of entertainment, public baths, libraries for the studious, 
and groves for the thoughtful or the sad. Gradually Epidaurus 
became a place of resort to patients from every part of Greece, 
acquired its peculiar privileges and usages, and may, therefore, 
be considered as one of the centres of Hellenic unity. Its 
monuments have crumbled into dust, like the bodies of those 
who found relief there : its serene beauty remains ; and if quiet 



OF GREECE AND TURKEY. 163 

scenes, fit to store the mind of a sufferer with images of peace, 
if cold groves, if dewy and secluded pastures, and gales as re- 
freshing as ever ascended " from the fields of sleep'^ to fan a 
fevered brow, be auspicious to health, the region of ^sculapius 
is still potent to remove some real maladies, and many an 
imaginary disease. 

We rode on through this valley, which in some places be- 
came narrow and rugged, for many miles, stopping occasionally 
to look back, through a vista in the olive woods, or from an 
eminence that surmounted their gray-green roof, upon the 
Epidaurian bay, girdled round with its mountains and its moun- 
tain isles. Our guides were impatient of these delays, and 
warned us that we should be late, and that the way was not 
easy. In this they spoke the truth. Spring had caught the 
pathway in her nets ; our horses with difficulty pushed oh, now 
along the gravelly bed of a river, half overgrown with oleander, 
now among rocks thick with arbutus, and now among brakes of 
almond, which left the coat, both of horse and rider, richly va- 
riegated with white and pink flowers. Never, surely, was the 
Bull that carried off Europa as richly attired as those unfortu- 
nate animals, who swung about their long tails as a terror to 
gadflies, and would have rejoiced, no doubt, in a cool plunge 
into the " ocean stream.^^ All the flowers in the world seemed 
to have met to produce the affluent vegetation which withstood 
our progress ', the eye, however, could hardly stray to anything 
else, so charmed was it with the tree which plainly had the 
mastery in the floral strife. The Judas-tree flushed the hill 
side sometimes for a quarter of a mile together, with its roseate 
thickets. Every sunny mound was enriched, every shadowy 
recess, at the angle of a stream, was lighted by one of those 
'' incense-bearing trees •/' while the dew-drops (still secreted in 
the shade) trembled in galaxies from its branches, or fell in 
glittering showers when the birds dinned the air, and shook the 



164 PICTURESQUE SKETCHES 

spray, with a more than usual impetuosity. Unxier them and 
around went on the impatient workings of the Spring, whose 
progress and pulsations one could almost have fancied were pal- 
pable. The plant which produced the most brilliant effect, 
next to the Judas-tree, was the cistus, which trailed its leaves, 
not only over the fragrant carpeting of thyme and lentiscus, 
but also over the holly and laurestinus — nay, which aften 
littered the broad roof of the ilex with its starry bloom, and 
scarcely abstained from the olive itself. 

No sooner had we lost the last views of the Bay of Epidaurus, 
than the Grulf of Nauplia lay before us, surrounded by its mount- 
ain ranges. Those mountains are yet higher than the Epi- 
daurian, and seen from the point of view from which we con- 
templated them, presented that fortunate combination of outlines 
which is but seldom to be found in the noblest mountains, and 
which fills the eye with a harmony as satisfactory as is im- 
pressed upon the ear by a perfect chord. Over the broken 
foreground of the steep which we had nearly ascended, six or 
seven different mountain chains were visible at once, retiring 
behind one another, and the loftiest covered with snow. Our 
sunset was past; but they were enjoying theirs still, and bathed 
in floods of crimson and gold, the remoter ranges being clad in 
a paler lilac, while their glens were streaked with shadows of a 
dimmer violet. Even my little old Frenchman I thought was 
moved by the sight, for, though he had been much disgusted 
at the length of the way, a gleam of satisfaction suddenly broke 
out, wherever there was room for it, on his rugged and crumpled 
face. ^^Napoli,'' he said, "is near;'^ and added, with a violent 
shake of the bridle, and kicking his little foot into the side of 
his horse, " Allons ! the dinner attends us V 

A reflection of the same sort seemed to occur to our horses, 
or else the cooler breeze of evening had refreshed them, for 
they put out very willingly their strength, which hitherto they 



OF GREECE AND TURKEY. 165 

had apparently been economizing as carefully as if tliey had 
been indoctrinated by my companion. On they went at a brisk 
pace; my friend's tongue was also once more unloosed, and 
again he scattered on all sides a countless multitude of maxims 
and aphorisms. As the road descended the hill, our speed in- 
creased ) our guides, and those who had attached themselves to 
our party (for the Grreeks are gregarious, and a horseman soon 
attracts a swarm about him), singing, shouting, laughing, and 
making more noise in their advance than a troop of cavalry. 
By the time we were in a canter, my horse put his foot on a. 
round stone and fell, the rest of our cavalcade immediately 
closing in upon, and very nearly riding over ns. Instantly my 
friend had reined in his mule, turned back his head, and ad- 
dressed me with the utmost politeness : " Est-ce-que Mon- 
sieur est mort?'^ "No,^^ I replied, ^^but my horse's knees are 
broken.'^ ^^Allons, allons, mon cher, montez toujours — le 
diner nous attend,'^ was his rejoinder. On, once more, we 
galloped, and reached Nauplia just as the mountains beyond 
the bay had let go their last hold of sunset. A pale green 
twilight sky stretched behind them in clear infinitude, "serene 
as the age of the righteous." Two long, thin clouds, dark, but 
with a glossiness about their edges, smooth as a nautilus shell, 
and shaped with an indescribable sweetness, floated far away 
into that green distance. One of them was lost before we had 
dismounted. 

While my friend went into the inn to order all things aright, 
I made my evening tour of inspection. I was well rewarded. 
The G-ulf of Nauplia is on a grander scale than that of Salamis 
or Corfu, and in all respects leaves the over-celebrated Bay of 
Naples far behind it. The mountains that surround it are real 
mountains, and the wide expanse of water is proportioned to 
them. The predominant character of the scene is that of a 
bright and jubilant majesty. Nauplia, so called^ in old times, 



166 PICTURESQUE SKETCHES 

from a son of Neptune, was, during the middle ages, an import- 
ant sea-port; and is now the most considerable city in G-reece, 
except Athens. It is strongly fortified by nature, and the 
hand of man has done much to add to its security. High up, 
on a crag that adjoins it, stands the citadel, built by the Vene- 
tians. On many parts of the walls, which rise out of, and 
sometimes blend with the rock, you meet Venetian inscriptions, 
and are confronted by that far-famed lion, whose shaggy head 
and effluent mane still attest, in so many parts of the world, 
the past greatness of the " haughty Republic," which for four- 
teen centuries sat between the east and the west, and extended 
an iron or a golden sceptre far over each. The lions hold their 
ground still, and, I hope, may for many a year ; when I passed 
them, however, their rocky heads were so swathed over with 
the masses of blue flowers which had crept about them, that 
one might have almost passed them unseen. Such, perhaps, 
is their best security. 

On returning to the inn it turned out that no one in it could 
speak a word of any language but G-reek. Not being able, 
therefore, to inquire for my companion, I walked in search of 
him all over the house. I found him where I ought to have 
looked first — in the kitchen. A pair of red slippers, which one 
of the women of the household had lent him, engulfed his little 
feet : his head was surmounted by his tall black nightcap ; and 
he stood with his face to the fire, in earnest, and apparently 
angry, converse with a great iron pot boiling thereon. Not a 
word could I understand, for he spoke Greek, either because it 
was his ^^ maxim'' that the contents of the pot were most likely 
to understand him, if addressed in the language of the country 
to which they belonged, or more probably because he was rail- 
ing at three girls (though out of scorn he turned his back to 
them) who stood behind him wondering, and at the master of 
the house, who sat cross-legged on the kitchen table, playing with 



OF GREECE AND TURKEY. 167 

a cat. Dinner was ready at last^ and we sat down to it with a 
traveler's appetite. ''■ All this you owe to me/^ he said : 
" without doubt, if I had not been there, they would have given 
you the cat to eat, and cooked it diahlement beside. I find 
that they are all infidels and impostors. Three Greeks make 
one Jew! Mon Dieu ! that I should live among barbarians !'' 

The next morning, discovering that there was no one at 
Nauplia who could speak any language but Glreek, I was 
much puzzled to know how I was to pick up a traveling ser- 
vant or guide to conduct me on my way. I betook myself for 
assistance to my French friend, who was about to return to .his 
unprofitable farm in the neighborhood. I found him already 
in the saddle, bis spectacles on his nose, his snuff-box in his 
hand, before him a small trunk containing his worldly goods, 
and behind him half a kid, which he had bought on economical 
terms at the inn. "■ Voila !'' he exclaimed, when I explained 
my difficulty, ^^ I always told you these men were barbarians. 
There is not one of them who can speak French ! With diffi- 
culty do they speak Greek. Often do they not understand me. 
My advice to you is to take the greatest care not to be mur- 
dered or robbed. Without phrase you must get a valet de 
place at once. Notwithstanding those are the worst impostors 
of all. Always it is necessary to economize. Adieu, Man- 
sieur.'' So saying, he lifted up his hat and made me a low 
bow. His black night-cap at the same moment slipped over 
his nose, and his horse, trotted on. In a moment after I heard 
him chattering as fast as ever, making, no doubt, rapid gene- 
ralizations, and prophesying to his guide concerning my ap- 
proaching fate. 

Somewhat puzzled by my position (though it was not the 
first time that I had found myself alone among people v/ho 
could not speak any language in common with me) I turned 
into the town, resolved to wait quietly for some favorable 



168 PICTURESQUE SKETCHES 

chance, and in tlie meantime to see whatever was to be seen. 
Fortune, perceiving that I was not going to hunt her down, 
was kind enough to visit me without a very long delay. As I 
was inspecting the fortifications of the citadel, I heard a voice 
behind me, and, turning, saw a very nondescript sort of being, 
who addressed me first by the title of Eficndi, and then by that 
of Eccellenza, and assured me that he was the man I was look- 
ing for. He intimated to me, moreover, that he spoke more 
languages than were heard at the tower of Babel ; a fact which 
I did not dispute, though I doubted much his being able to 
speak two sentences of truth in any one of them from sunrise 
to sunset. Notwithstanding, I was very glad to engage his 
services : we soon got into conversation in Italian ; and after 
telling me that he had visited all countries, and recounting 
many adventures, he assured me that it was not for the sake 
of money that he proposed to accompany me, but solely with a 
view to my convenience ; and that he was ready to set off at a 
mementos notice, without making terms like another man, but 
simply on an agreement that he was to have five francs a-day, 
his board and lodging, a horse for himself, and another for his 
luggage, his expenses back from whatever place I might leave 
him at, a buonamano, and my good opinion, as well as lasting 
friendship. I told him that the terms suited me, that I already 
considered him an oracle, as well as a holy man, and a man of 
the world ; and that I should take him with me to Delphi and 
Patras, visiting first the ruins on the Argolic plain. 



or GREECE AND TURKEY. 169 



CHAPTER XII. 

TIRYNTHUS— ARGOS— MYCEN^. 

The Ruins of Tirynthus— Early Specimens of the Arch — The Plain of 
Argos — Theatre carved out of the Rock — Acropolis of Argos— The 
Hereum — Antiquity of Argos — Homeric Recollections — Legendary 
History — A Night on the Argolic Plain — Contrast between Italian and 
Grecian Scenery — Colossal Ruins of Mycenae — Gateway of the Lions — 
Tomb of Agamemnon — Stones of its vault. 

Early the next morning we mounted our horses, and in a 
short time found ourselves close to the ruins of Tirynthus, 
the most ancient monuments, at least of military architecture, 
to be found in Grreece. Tirynthus was an ancient city in the 
time of Homer, and belongs to that age which survives in 
legend only, and has no part in history. It was the early re- 
sidence of Hercules, and the home of Alcmena his mother. The 
legend that its walls were built by the Cyclopes will hardly 
seem extravagant to any one who looks on them, and who is 
moved to as much admiration of them as Homer expressed. 
The citadel alone remains. Its walls consist of prodigious 
blocks of stone put together after a fashion ruder even than that 
usually called Cyclopean; those blocks not being perfectly 
wrought, and fitted into each other, but consisting simply of 
rocks with their upper and lower surface smoothed. I explored 
a long dark gallery, the walls of which are connected by huge 
stones that lean against each other, and meet at an acute angle. 
In another place the citadel is entered through a subterranean 
passage on a scale yet larger, the arching being in this instance 
15 



170 PICTURESQUE SKETCHES 

effected, not by two stones, but by four or five at eacb side, 
meeting in the centre, and sustained by their own weight with- 
out any cement. And yet it has been affirmed by some that 
the Komans invented the arch— as if they could have discovered 
anything that escaped the penetration of the Greeks. It is 
much more likely that the Grreeks did not admire the arch, 
than that they did not, at any period, understand its principle. 
The main object of Greek architecture, from the time that it 
had outgrown its Asiatic associations, was simply beauty, and 
not either constructive vastness or mystic symbolism. For this 
reason the Greeks did not need the arch. It corresponded 
well, on the other hand, with the character of that great people 
who made the whole world pass under their yoke ; and in that 
sense we are right in associating it with them. Building as 
they did so frequently with brick, the Romans were, indeed, 
dependent on the arch. The Herculean citadel commands 
nearly the noblest view of the plain of Argolis. 

Traversing the greater part of that plain, I arrived, before 
sunset, at the site of the far-famed Argos — the spot sacred to 
Juno, and the most ancient in its records of any in Greece, 
with but one exception. It is remarkable how rapidly our im- 
pressions with respect to one object of interest are sometimes 
modified in the presence of another. A face which at first sight 
seemed nearly perfect becomes effeminate, coarse, or betrays 
some other defect when contrasted with another face, not per- 
haps on the whole superior, but analogous to it, and yet in some 
particular different. My former impressions of Greece were 
thus in some measure modified on this occasion. When at 
Athens, the antiquity of all around me, as well as its beauty, 
was a thought seldom absent from my mind. Standing at Ar- 
gos, and ruminating over its history, Athens seemed but an 
upstart which had shot up rapidly, and burst into short and 
sudden bloom, ages after Argos had been delivered from the 



OP GREECE AND TURKEY. 171 

disquietudes of mortal life. The early monuments of Athens 
date from about the time of the Persian war^ B. C. 490. Argos 
and Mycenae were traditionally great in the time of Homer^ 
some 400 years before — venerable in the days of Agamemnon, 
300 years earlier — and began to exist more than 600 years pre- 
viously, if we are to rely on the historians who affirm that the 
kingdom of Argos was established under Inachus in the year 
B. C. 1856. The kingdom of Sicyon alone was yet more ancient, 
having been founded in the year B. C. 2089, about two centu- 
ries and a half after the deluge. 

The remains of Argos are few, but are of deep interest. The 
chief of them is a vast theatre, carved out of the side of a hill 
that encloses the Argolic plain at its southern extremity, and 
situated beneath the Acropolis, a conical hill, not much less 
than a thousand feet in height. A few of the substructions of 
the citadel remain, but, unfortunately, they are mixed up with 
some of the Venetian fortifications. The theatre will, probably, 
last as long as the world lasts, hewn as it is out of the everlast- 
ing rock. Its steps rise above one another to an immense 
height, and are divided into three tiers, the lowest of which con- 
tain thirty-six, the middle sixteen, and the highest fourteen. 
From this theatre you enjoy a glorious view of another and a 
natural theatre, consisting of the plain of Argolis and the Argolic 
bay — one vast stage, half of it green and half azure — shut in by 
two semicircular ranges of mountains. That view was enriched 
for an Argive with objects which we behold no more — with the 
walls and towers of Tirynthus to the east, those of Mycenae to 
the north, and, beyond the river Inachus, but at a distance of 
several miles, the vast and lonely Hereum, or Temple of Juno. 
Of this temple nothing remains but some traces of the foun- 
dation. The fane of the Matron Groddess, like one of the chief 
Basilicas of Eavenna, was situated at a considerable distance 
from the crowded ways of men— a circumstance which, doubt- 



172 PICTURESQUE SKETCHES 

less, added to its solemnity and to the devotion of her wor- 
shipers. 

Ascending to the highest tier of those rocky steps, and 
resting there, I mused — as who must not have done ? — -on the 
revolutions which that plain had witnessed. It is, perhaps, 
well that such thoughts are hut seldom realized by us : — a 
G-reek, who had felt them deeply, would hardly have found 
much interest in the most stirring events of the late war, or in 
any triumph which can he effected by us creatures of an hour. 
We would not allow ourselves to be driven if we did not wear 
blinkers ; and if we carried our heads high enough to see far 
before and behind us, our feet would be slow to move. That 
rock, which looked on me as a modern intruder, had, doubtless, 
looked equally so on the herald who toiled thither to inform 
the Argive people of the Marathonian victory. The classical 
age must have been regarded as a " profane novelty'^ by old 
men who remembered the traditions of the heroic age. The 
heroic age itself must have seemed secular and coarse, full of 
insolence and of self-will, compared with that still earlier patri- 
archal age, when Argos reposed under the shade of her heredi- 
tary kings, and bequeathed no history because she committed 
few crimes. The King of Men himself, ^^ Shepherd of his 
people'^ as he was, may have seen many a graver head than 
that of Thersites shaken at that sceptre so unlike a crook, 
and been warned by many a priest beside Chryses that pride 
must have a fall. Homer, if from that theatre his eyelids ever 
felt the glow of a sunset which he could see no more, must 
have known that his own poetry but preserved (reflecting, like 
the mountain ranges around, the light of a luminary past away) 
the sunset recollections of an age whose glory had vanished 
and was no more. 

His song, however, has at least done what neither marble, 
nor iron, nor gold has done ; — it has preserved the memory of 



ft. 



or GREECE AND TURKEY. 173 

that heroic age. As I gazed on the scene around me, I thought 
not, at first, of Inachus or of Danaus, of Asia or of Egypt. 
" Vixerunt multi fortes ante Agamemnona :'' notwithstanding 
none of them recurred to my recollection. The drama cele- 
brated on the wide plain beneath me was the multitudinous, 
all-compassing drama of the Homeric epic. A lost world 
found room to live again in that charmed circle. The horses 
grazing on the peaceful mead, far off, seemed the " tempest- 
footed steeds'^ for which the Junonian plain was celebrated : 
the poppies at my feet were tinged with the victim's blood. 
I thought of that night to which Europe and the world are in- 
debted for so much that is highest in human intelligence, the 
night of the embarkation for Troy. The Argive host advanced 
towards the sea, lifting a forest of spears that retorted the last 
beams of day. Side by side, car-borne, in the midst, moved 
on '' the brother kings of Atreus' royal race,'' peaceful heralds 
stepping beside, and leaning on the rein ; the sacrifice to Nep- 
tune far before them ; and boys and cymbal-tossing virgins 
closing the grave procession. They reached at last the shore. 
The sacrificial flame rose higher, and flashed from the wave. 
There was a pause, and then, once more, I heard the cymbals 
and the fifes, and, when they ceased, the grating of the '' great 
black ships," as they were drawn down the strand, and the 
murmur of proud satisfaction with which they glided into the 
" divine sea." 

Such reveries have no end. I saw Inachus land with his 
colonists, and hew down the primeval forests— Danaus steal 
from the palace where he had been hospitably sheltered, excite 
the people by pointing to the dried up streams, and expel the 
last of the Inachian princes. I saw the last of his own race 
driven from the throne by the Heraclidse — Argos captured by 
the kindred people of Mycense — the historian, Pausanias, wan- 
dering among its ruins, and copying its inscriptions. The moon, 

15* 



174 PICTURESQUE SKETCHES 

whose broad and golden shield had hung suspended above the 
east not long after the sun dropped in the west, had climbed 
high^ and was pouring a white light over the plain^ before my 
ruminations had worn themselves out. My servant, meantime^ 
had provided a dinner not far off, and had addressed me more 
than once without receiving a very definite answer. • Once more 
he sidled up to me and assured me, ^Hhat the fowl he had 
ordered would be quite overdone, poor creature, unless I came 
to eat him." My conscience did not allow me to keep a much- 
traveled, large-experienced man, like the Ulysses who attended 
me, any longer fasting; and when conscience is seconded by 
appetite, its mandates are seldom disobeyed. Accordingly, we 
descended to the modern Argos, a flourishing village, and the 
fowl was absolved from the necessity of waiting any longer. 

The house in which we passed the night adjoined the village, 
but stood apart from it, and was attached to a farm on the pro- 
perty of General Church. It was large, clean, boasted beds 
(a rare possession), and had a still greater advantage in being 
wholly free from the vermin that infest most houses in Greece. 
The night was one of those glorious, beaming nights of Greece, 
when all things rejoice in a splendor far diffused, when the face 
of nature betrays nothing of suspicion or timidity, and little of 
reserve, and her breast expands with confidence and pleasure ; 
a warm fresh night, in which a Helena or a Hermia might 
stray in the wilderness, and sleep in the moonlight forest with- 
out danger of injury. I could not go to bed, and walked for 
hours up and down the open gallery beneath the roof, watching 
the glazed and glistening field and fancying that I could catch 
a glimpse also of the glimmering sea, listening to the rustling 
of the plane-trees hard by and fancying that I heard in its in- 
tervals the more constant murmur of the Inachus, as well as a 
soft and hushing sound which rippled up in every direction 
from the dewy grass. For a long time I could not imagine 



or GREECE AND TURKEY. 175 

wHy images connected with Sorrento were constantly rising be- 
fore me. "Am I not/' I asked myself, " wliere I haye long 
wished to be ? Why, then, can I not be content with it ? What 
have I to do with the Syrens' cave, the house of Tasso, the 
deep ravines, the heaving waters, or the tesselated pavements 
beneath them ? At last, I discovered that I associated the two 
places together, in consequence of that rich and delicate odor 
which embalms the air of each. Never, except on the "Piano 
di Sorrento," have I enjoyed a fragrance approaching to that 
of the Argolic plain by night, a fragrance which proceeded from 
the breath of the lemon-groves, mingled with that of the grass 
and its honey-dews, and lightened and pierced through by the 
thrice-sifted purity of the breeze from the sea. In many of 
the G-reek bays this exquisite odor salutes you, the plain being 
commonly as rich as the mountains around it are severe; but 
in no other have I ever found it so delightful as at Argos, and 
that part of Italy, which is like a fragment of Glreece detached. 
I enjoyed it, I am sure, even in my sleep; and so passed the 
one night which I spent "in Argolis beside the echoing sea." 
Before five o'clock the next morning, my trusty servant in- 
formed me that our horses were ready, and I rose refreshed, for 
a perfect climate serves us in a large part for sleep as well as 
food. We directed our course to Mycenae, and the tomb of 
Agamemnon. On our way we passed a series of landscapes, 
in some measure analogous to what the nobler portion of 
Southern Italy (Magna G-rascia) might present if it could get 
rid of its "holy bounds of property," and open itself out with 
the same sea-like frankness and expansiveness. Rightly to in- 
terpret the best scenery of Italy, one should have previously 
seen that of G-reece, although, for the most part, the two are 
very different. The scenery of Greece is far more determined, 
and marked in its character. An Italian landscape wears often 
an ambiguous expression, the meaning of which is stamped by 



176 PICTURESQUE SKETCHES 

its architectural or atmospherical accidents. In Lombardy the 
dusky tower gives it something of a northern character ; near 
Venice the clustered domes make it look Oriental; and near 
Paestum its temples mark it Grecian. Italy has an equivocal 
loveliness, which, like some engaging but effeminate disposi- 
tions, allows its character to be for a time whatever may be 
impressed upon it by extrinsic circumstance; its prevailing 
expression being that of an apprehensive and ever varying 
sweetness, so sensitive that it changes with every change in the 
clouds, and puts one in mind of Shakspeare's description of 
Cressida, " nay, her foot speaks.'^ Greece is yet more rich 
where she is rich; but her cliffs are lean and lofty, her rocks 
are marble, not tufo or lava; her beauty has in it ever an ele- 
ment of the sublime, and reminds you yet more of a Pallas 
than of Aphrodite. 

After a ride of some hours, we arrived at the ruins of My- 
cenas, the most ancient, and in their size and architecture 
the most wonderful of all Greek remains. The citadel of 
Mycenae stood on the platform of a hill, about a thousand 
feet in length, and five hundred in breadth at the summit; that 
hill being formed by the converging roots of the mountains as 
they descend into the plain, and being almost islanded by two 
mountain streams, which rush from their rocky sources and 
clasp its base. The walls which encompass the summit of this 
eminence are composed of stones so enormous that how they 
were ever placed on that height I cannot imagine ; nor was it 
until I had carefully examined them and observed the scientific 
precision with which they were fitted together that I could con- 
vince myself that they were other than rocks shaped with a 
singular degree of regularity. One of them which I measured 
was fifteen feet square, another was eighteen feet by twelve. 
These prodigious remains embrace an ample circuit, and vary 
much in their height, which is commonly inconsiderable. The 



OP GREECE AND TURKEY. 177 

ruins of two gateways also remain^ one of wliicli sustains above 
its portal the most ancient piece of sculpture known in Greece 
— two lions carved in low relief on a block of green basalt. 
These lions are apparently the only memorials of an extinct 
school of art, as Homer's two great Epics are of a lost world 
of poetry. In a position nearly erect they lean against each 
other, separated by a broken pillar. Whether they had any 
remoter meaning, or simply expressed the royal power of the 
Atridae, we cannot learn. When we look upon structures 
which were ruins in the days of Thucydides we must be content 
with seeing as much as he saw, and knowing as little. There 
stood those lions before the first stone of the Parthenon was 
laid, and before Peisistratus had collected the poems which 
celebrated the King of Men; and there, too, lay around them, 
even at that time, like gods dethroned and wounded on the 
battle field, the Titan fragments which we still behold. 

Not far from these walls I reached the end of my pilgrimage 
—the tomb of the monarch who reduced Troy. Some anti- 
quarians assert that this building was the treasury of the 
wealthy Mycenae; I know, however, of no justification for so 
unpoetical a theory. The mighty vault bears the aspect of a 
sepulchral chamber, such as an impassioned and sorrowing na- 
tion might fitly raise. To enter it you must descend slightly. 
The interior is a circular hall, forty-five feet in diameter, walled 
round with enormous blocks, and forming, at the height of forty- 
five feet, a dome so sharp as to resemble a hollow cave. With- 
in this chamber is another of the same shape, and quite dark, 
twenty feet in diameter, and fifteen feet high. Over its en- 
trance, to pass through which you must stoop, hangs a stone 
nine feet by seven in size. The largest, however, of these"' 
blocks is that which surmounts the outer entrance. I measured 
it, and found it to be no less than twenty-one feet by fifteen, and 
four feet thick ! Its size is the more wonderful in consequence 



178 PICTURESQUE SKETCHES 

of the elevation at which it stands, and its being only supported 
at the ends. The stones of this architectural and monumental 
Stonehenge, are cut perfectly smooth. 

Such is the tomb of Agamemnon, the first and last cap- 
tain of Confederate G-reece, the warrior who led to a remote 
eastern strand what may be regarded as the crusading army of 
the ancient world (since it fought to vindicate domestic rights, 
and to punish the perfidious and profane violation of hospital- 
ity), the chief before whose lifted sceptre the sword of Achilles 
dropped its point, the father of Iphigenia, the master, not un- 
loved, whose fate Cassandra prophesied before his palace por- 
tals, tearing the prophetic fillet from her brows, when at the 
instance of Clytemnestra, he had descended from his car, and 
planted his feet upon the rich carpets rolled to it from the 
gates — those carpets which the sea, 

"Eternal dyer of the blood-red robes," 

had imbued with a Tyrian dye, dark as that stain so soon to 
sufi'use the marble bath. The peaceful scene was not unworthy 
of the memorials it enshrined. Behind the Acropolitan 
hill and sepulchral chamber rose two vast rocky steeps, one of 
them luminous as day, the other dark with the shade of its 
broad compeer, the projecting spurs of that mountain range 
which girds, "with stony belt,^^ the Argolic plain. All around, 
beneath the vault, and even among the fragments of the cita- 
del, the ripening corn diffused a Lethean sound, soft as the 
whisper in a death-chamber. The funeral feast demands its 
pomps as well as the wedding festival, and enjoyed them on 
this occasion ; for in the shadow of those old walls the patches 
of corn were brightened with multitudinous poppies, purple 
and crimson, tinged as if with " Proserpine's ever-setting sun,'^ 
and dilfusing around their heavy opiate odor. Nature, too, 
was pleased, after her impartial fashion, to intermix the gay 



OF GREECE AND TURKEY. 179 

with the grave; and the bases of the slope^ and the fields all 
around, were dressed in flowers of every hue — the blue '^forget- 
me-not/^ the convolvulus, the campagnola, lilies of every sort, 
with clustered bells and snowy urns — Irises, that bent low 
with their own weight, and seemed to listen at the ground — 
the abundant yellow asphodel, and countless flowers beside, 
which, wasting no grief on a king who had had his day three 
thousand years ago, -transmitted, in their own brief hour, that 
vernal celebration which began in Eden, and rejoiced as if the 
child of Ceres had been that morning loosed from the Shades. 
Among them, as they waved in the breeze, the insects glanced : 
the Psyche floated above them, and the graver dragon-fly pur- 
sued his prey : — the bees also murmured in their tents a 
drowsy chime, half lost in the hoarser monotony of the two- 
fold stream hard by. 



180 • PICTURESQUE SKETCHES 



CHAPTER XIII. 

EXPEDITION TO DELPHI. 

Arts of Antiquity — Way to Corinth' — Nemea — Character of Greek 
Mountains — Greek Scenery and Greek Character — Corinth — Lutrar- 
ki — A Child's Consolation — Embarkation for Delphi — Arrival at Sa- 
lona — Gulf of Lepaato and surrounding Mountains — Flowers in Un- 
reclaimed Lands — Greek Agriculturists — Plain of Cirrha — A Parnas- 
sian Ravine — Hock Temples — Castri — Site of Delphi — The Sacred 
Cleft and Oracular Shrine — Loss of its Memorials — Fountain of Cas- 
talia. 

Musing mucli on the monuments I was leaving behind^ I 
pursued my way toward Corinth. When we abandon our seat 
by the sea-shore, and walk inland, our ears are for a long time 
filled with a murmur as of many waters, and we fancy that the 
tide is still coming in all around us. It was thus that the 
images of those vast architectural rocks clung to my eyes ; and 
difficult indeed I found it to shake off the questionings with 
which they filled the mind. Whence came those huge stones ? 
How were they lifted? What strong impulse, or what sus- 
tained instinct, compelled an unknown race which lived thou- 
sands of years ago, to raise them to the top of that steep, and 
to plant them one on another? Assuredly there are other 
forces in the world besides those connected with the physical 
<^eeds or the selfish desires of men ; and that is but a blind 
philosophy which takes no account of them. The passion, 
whether religious or patriotic, that separated those rocks from 
their mountain beds, and made them a wonder to all time, was 



OF GREECE AND TURKEY. 181 

a principle stronger than winds or waves, or the madness of the 
people. That must have been a marvelous race which was 
visited by such aspirations; and yet but for the accidental sur- 
vival of Homer's poems, we should have known nothing of it. 
How comes it that no more accurate traditions existed of that 
race in the days of Pericles ', for if they had then existed, they 
would not since have been lost ? In the other fine arts, that 
race seems to have made but little progress ; and yet the archi- 
tectural monuments which it has left us suggest the idea that it 
must have possessed a knowledge of mechanical arts lost in 
more recent times. Centuries later the love of the gigantic in 
architecture continued in many parts of the world, especially 
among the Romans; and yet how seldom do we meet with any- 
thing approaching to those colossal remains ! Did this circum- 
stance arise from the fact that mechanical inventions once known 
had been forgotten ; or did the sons of earlier earth inherit a 
strength of nerve and sinew compared with which later races 
are degenerate ? When we call to mind the rapid bound in 
advance which the human family seems to have made within 
but a few centuries of the flood, and the works which they ex- 
ecuted within the same period, we can hardly help imagining 
that the diminished duration of man's life is a type of a corre- 
sponding loss sustained in his physical and intellectual powers. 
Such meditations must often, I think, occupy the mind of 
those who have visited the remains of the '^golden Mycenas/' 
If they should prove oppressive or perplexing, a better remedy 
can hardly be found than a ride from that spot to Corinth. On 
our left we passed near to the' field of Nem'ea, the games of 
which, during successive centuries, concentrated the eyes of all 
Greece. Nothing now remains to mark the spot, except a sta- 
dium six hundred feet in length, and three pillars of the tem- 
ple of Jupiter. Our way was but one degree less beautiful than 
that by which I had gone from Epidaurus to Nauplia. The 
16 



182 PICTURESQUE SKETCHES 

more I observed them, the more I was impressed by the pecu- 
liar character of the Grecian mountainSj which is diiferent from 
that of all others I know. In Asia the mountains lift them- 
selves up in smooth masses and solemn domes, white if the 
spring be not far advanced, otherwise green, even when seen 
from a distance, owing to the depth of the soil and the purity 
of the air. The Alpine summits pierce the blue sky with sharp 
wedge and glittering spire ; and those of the Apennines rise up, 
ridge beyond ridge, like frozen waves, and rake the clouds with 
rough and woody crags. Equally different from all these are 
the mighty terraces, and platforms, and mountain cliffs, which^ 
in Greece, clasp as with a wall the bright bays, or the green 
plains — plains they must be called, not valleys, for they more 
often rise slightly toward the centre than are hollowed out into 
basins. The extreme luxuriance of these plains is in striking 
contrast with the majestic ranges that encompass them, which 
are not more graceful in their outlines than they are severe in 
their geological structure. Spare, and lean, and bony, as it 
were, as the head of an Arab horse, or the hand of his rider, 
their rigid precipices rise perpendicularly from the fields and 
flowers, fleshed over with little vegetation except that of the 
wild thyme, so that at a little distance their coloring is that of 
a pale gray or lilac ; and while looking on them, you remember 
their marble quarries. 

In every country we observe an analogy between the scenery 
and the character of the people. In Greece I could never re- 
mark this contrast between the mountains and the plains with- 
out being reminded of an analogous difference between the 
character of the Greek intellect and of the Greek temperament. 
■ The former was pre-eminently severe, muscular, and masculine : 
while the latter, even in the better days of Greece, tended to 
the epicurean and the unstable. Perhaps the charge to be 
brought against the Greeks is not really one which affects their 



OF GREECE AND TURKEY. 183 

peculiar temperament so much as it condemns them for having 
allowed their character to be so much determined by that tem- 
perament. The temperament, taken separately, ought to be, 
as theii-s was, susceptive, apprehensive, open to all impressions 
of the pleasurable and the beautiful ; yet such a temperament 
will be but too apt to degenerate into voluptuousness and in- 
constancy, if it be not subordinated to a resolute will and a 
spiritual mind. The different portions of human nature have 
different offices, and can only work well when they work in due 
subjection, the lower to the higher;, for the especial merit of 
the servant is often that which disqualifies him from the oSce 
of a master. The merit of the whole is something different 
from that of the parts. Skepticism, for instance, is very far 
from being a habit characteristic of the noblest intellects, yet 
the understanding, taken as a separate faculty, is essentially 
skeptical; although, working in subordination to the higher 
reason and the moral sense, it does not necessarily lead a man 
to skepticism. Its especial office is to doubt, to try, to prove all 
things ; nor does the fact that a man possesses an understanding 
peculiarly subtle in skeptical inquisition demonstrate more than 
that he possesses a singularly powerful understanding. Such a 
faculty is likely to be dangerous or useful, according as he allows 
himself to be ruled by his understanding alone, or employs it 
in due and graduated confederation with higher gifts. The dull 
has little merit in not doubting, and the cold in withstanding 
the temptations of sense. It was the misfortune of the Greeks 
that during their declining period the understanding gradually 
usurped upon the reason; and the temperament, rather than 
the moral sense, became the representative of the man. 

To return, however, from the Greek character to Greece. 
The day was propitious, and the ride as agreeable as I could 
wish in every respect except one. My horse, very different 
from those which used to bound beneath me over the Athenian 



184 PICTURESQUE SKETCHES 

plains, had two serious defects ; he would not go on unless I 
gave him. a loose rein, and he could not stand on his legs un- 
less I held the bridle tight. In other respects, as my trusty 
guide remarked, he was' unexceptionable. Before many hours 
the castle-like Acropolis of Corinth was once more in view ; 
and, although the day was not far advanced, it already flung 
its mighty shadow far over the sea. Not without regret did I 
leave at my right hand the road to the eastern port, by which 
Athens is reached, and advance along that which skirts theGrulf 
of Lepan to, terminating in Lutrarki, a little village about six 
miles beyond Corinth, and constituting its western port. At 
Lutrarki I procured a decked boat ; not fewer than eight boat- 
men insisting on being my crew, and engaging to take me first 
to Delphi, and then to Patras, where I was to meet the Austrian 
steamer bound for Corfu and Ancona. " How soon," I asked, 
with the aid of my interpreter, ^' shall I find myself at Patras ?" 
^^That depends," they answered, ^' on the delay you make at 
Delphi." ^^What ought to be the length of the voyage, inde- 
pendent of a visit to Delphi ?"' They laughed "and answered, 
"ten hours perhaps — ^or perhaps a day — or two days — or (the 
eight men lifting up three fingers each) it may be three days." 
Finding that my Greek friends were far too shrewd to commit 
themselves to the calculation of an average, I dismissed from 
my mind all western notions of punctuality, and began to think 
of laying in store of provision. 

It was with difficulty that anything of the sort was procured. 
Fortunately I had brouglit some tea with me, and all that I 
wanted in addition was a little bread and milk. The bread was 
near at hand, and for the milk, my servant sent a messenger to 
a neighboring valley, where it was reported that cows had been 
lately seen. As I walked up and down the shore, somewhat 
vexed at losing so favorable a breeze, I heard the boatmen clap- 
ping their hands in exultation ; and my servant, coming up to 



OF GREECE AND TURKEY. 185 

me with the importance of an ancient herald hiden with the 
tidings of a victory, announced that he had made out a young 
pig, and that we should have a wonderful feast. " But the 
milk," I said, " what news of that ?" Milk ! he advised me 
not to think about it. He had already found out butter. 
Could I not put that into my tea ? It was admirable butter — 
^^ veramente stupendo.''' After a little time the pig was cooked, 
and our party had eaten the greater part of it, when the wail- 
ing of a child from a cottage hard by assailed our ears. Now 
and again it was hushed, but it rose again more vehemently than 
before. I inquired what occasioned the lament ; and my ser- 
vant replied that it was no consequence, but that, in fact, the 
little pig had been a pet belonging to a child in the cottage, who 
was distressed at its untimely fkte. Much shocked at liis loss 
and at our Thyestean feast, I sent to inquire in what way I could 
make the child amends for the injury. In a few minutes three 
men brought me back an answer (the Greeks always think that 
too many persons cannot be employed on the simplest errand), 
stating, that the child had at last been prevailed on to wipe its 
eyes, and had sent me word that what would please him most 
was a slice of the pig, with a good deal of fat attached to it. I 
sent it to him, of course, and lost as little time as I could in 
imitating his philosophy. Few things are more curious than 
the mode in which the affections, passions, and appetites change 
into each other. I have heard it asserted, that animals which 
eat their young, begin by licking them out of parental affection. 
It is a pity that the change should always be from the higher 
instinct to the lower. How interesting it would be to observe 
a human instinct supervening upon an animal one — to detect 
Russia, for instance, betrayed into something like a parental 
affection for Poland, and seeking with her a union not stimu- 
lated merely by ungovernable appetite. 

The delay was fortunate in one respect, as it enabled mc to 

16^^ 



186 PICTURESQUE SKETCHES 

extend my hospitality to a Greek woman, a soldier's wife, wlio 
wished to make her way to f-'alona, where she was to rejoin her 
husband, and who applied to me for a passage in my boat. She 
was interesting-looking, and rather sad — why, I did not dis- 
cover, as I could hold no conversation with her in Greek. In 
the eastj however, to talk is no necessary part of good- 
breeding; people converse, or are silent, according to their 
mood : and as we sat side by side in the stern of the boat, we 
had, at least, the songs of the sailors to amuse us. No dolphin 
was attracted by that chime through the moonlit waters, and 
Arion, I felt persuaded, was a much better musician. When it 
grew late, I made over my cabin to my companion, who had, I 
fear, but a bed of gravel to repose cn„ and lay down on the 
deck, roofed in by my many-skinned capote, the hood of which 
effectually protected my head without the aid of a hat. Our 
breeze slackened before we had got half way from Corinth to 
Parnassus, nor could the sailors enliven it again by song, whistle, 
or malediction. I cared little about the matter, for I enjoyed 
the present, and saw, over that agreeable foreground, glimmer- 
ing views of a future, which, even not so seen, would have been 
inviting. There I lay, sleepy, but yet sufficiently awake to 
hear the rustling of our keel as it slid through the water when 
the breeze for a moment filled the sail, and, during the inter- 
vals, the babbling of that sail in a lighter air. Through my 
half-closed eyelids I could see also the silver plane of the waters, 
and the red cap of a sailor bending towards me, now and again, 
as he dipped his head to let the boom pass over it. I remem- 
bered that before morning our boat would have drifted into the 
shadow of the Parnassian and Heliconian ridges — nay, that 
every moment, slowly as we advanced, we were drawing nearer 
to the mystical centre of Greek religion, the fount of inspi- 
ration ana the oracular shi'ine. It was no business of mine to 
hold the rudder : it was no duty of mine to pull the oaiv I was 



OF GREECE AND TURKEY. 187 

contented — the world seemed to hang well-balanced on its centre. 
"While I thus mused, I found that my head, at least, could ba- 
lance itself no longer, and dropped asleep. 

The next morning we reached Salona, and I bade adieu to 
my fair companion, who, I hope, soon rejoined her husband. 
We made each other very civil speeches on parting ; nor did it 
the least signify that neither of us understood the language of 
the otber, as, no doubt, each interpreted in the best sense what 
was said with so much gravity. In spite of my servant's re- 
monstrances, I refused to take horses, knowing that they would 
prove but a hindrance to exploring among the rocks, and not 
tliinking a walk of five miles, terminated by Delphi, very for- 
midable. The scenery of Delphi and its neighborhood, I have 
no hesitation in saying, is the finest that I have ever seen ; and 
I have visited all the most beautiful regions of Europe. The 
mountain ranges at both sides of the gulf are from eight to nine 
thousand feet in height; and though many of the Swiss mount- 
ains are loftier, the table land of the valleys from which you 
contemplate them is generally so elevated as to take much from 
their apparent height. Nor do I believe that the Swiss mount- 
ains rise to a greater height from the level of any of the lakes 
which they adjoin, than Parnassus rises from the Gulf of Le- 
panto — that noblest of lakes, whose breadth, vast as is the ex- 
panse, is never too great for beauty ; and whose shores are en- 
riched successively with associations, Egyptian, heroic^ classical, 
Eoman, Crusading, Venetian, and Turkish. 

The plain of Salona is ample, rich, and soft, swelling gradu- 
ally and slightly upward toward the middle, and sinking, on 
one side, down to the mountain walls, and on the other to- the 
sea. The green expanse is closed at its eastern and western 
ends by the mountains, which slant in steep headlands into the 
gulf. The remoter border of the plain drops with an inde- 
scribable grace, and with curves that can only be compared to 



188 PICTURESQUE SKETCHES 

those of a human form, into three dark glens, Vv^hich wind be- 
tween cliff and crag into the labyrinthine mountains. Of 
these three glens the midmost is that which leads to Delphi. 
We had to walk at least an hour before we reached its entrance. 
Our way at first extended over a grassy expanse, if that can be 
called grassy in which the flowers outnumber the green blades. 
That plain could not have been more richly carpeted if our 
vanished Eden had been buried beneath it, and tried to force 
its way up again. No one can guess the beauty of flowers who 
does not see them under such circumstances. A single flower 
is a beautiful object ; but if you contemplate many at once it 
should not be in a trim parterre, where the space is trifling and 
the colors are arbitrarily assorted but in those meadowy masses 
which deck the wilderness in lands at once fruitful and unre- 
claimed. Where the soil, unviolated for ages by the plough, is 
rich as that of our gardens, and the climate is fresher than that 
of our parks, and warmer than that of our conservatories. Na- 
ture clothes the earth with flowers as lavishly as she clothes a 
tropical bird with feathers. In her abundance caprice has no 
part, and the harmony of colors always equals their profusion. 
So was it here. The poppies, the waving anemones, and count- 
less flowers besides, extended their streams of crimson or of pur- 
ple in long flowing curves (each kind, no doubt, attracted by 
the soil that suited it best), as if Spring had here emptied her 
urns with a prodigal hand, and flooded the world with glory. 

Having traversed about half the plain we found ourselves 
within an olive wood which occupies its centre. It was not 
one continuous forest, for in the midst of its old and gnarled 
stems, through which the horizontal light of early morning 
levelled its shafts, rather tinted with green than blunted, there 
extended openings of all shapes and every size in which agricul- 
ture began to encroach on the pasture land, or pasture to con- 
tend with the wilderness. Here, as in a colony, the newly- 



OF GREECE AND TURKEY. 189 

reclaimed land was too rich to require a careful culture; and I 
was amused by the careless hilarity with which the peasants 
prosecuted their light toils. They knocked the ground (I can- 
not say they dug it) with a sort of shovel, the iron part of 
which was placed at right angles to the wood, so as neither to 
require them to stoop nor to lean their foot upon it. With 
nature's good will apparently, and without either solicitation or 
compulsion, they, demanded the fruits of an unexhausted soil. In 
other openings amid the wood people were employed in harrowing 
the ground, a process which they effected after a manner quite as 
singular. The harrows probably required to be loaded, but the 
laborers were far above seeking stones for that purpose. They 
adopted a much simpler expedient, sitting cross-legged, after 
the Turkish foshion, upon the harrow, as close as they could 
pack, and allowing their gray or mouse-colored oxen to drag it 
very much at their own discretion amid the blades of strug- 
gling corn; while they themselves swung about in their white 
kilts and red caps, laughing and telling stories. One hardly 
knew whether to call them laborers or revelers. Indeed, thus 
drawn about they looked like nothing so much as sea-gods with 
monsters yoked to their car, who had feasted too long with 
Neptune, or the "blameless Ethiopians/' and mistaken the 
laiad for the sea. 

Emerging from the road and traversing the rest of the plain, 
celebrated in ancient times as the hallowed plain of Cirrha, we 
reached the midmost of the three ravines. We did not enter 
into its depths; but scaling the precipice at its left side, fol- 
lowed its tortuous course along the higher level. Unwinding 
from the heart of the Parnassian mountains, toward which our 
faces were turned, ihat ravine gradually descended toward the 
plain we had left, long, dark, and narrow, walled at each side 
by perpendicular cliffs, which shone in a dazzling light ren- 
dered yet more glaring by its contrast with a dusky and slender 



190 PICTURESQUE SKETCHES 

olive-wood that streamed like a river along the bottom of the 
glen, following its sinuosities, and tracking a narrow river un- 
seen from the heights above. Slowly, though the way was 
smooth, we advanced along our ascending terrace, which was 
girt on the left with mountains, as was also the terrace that 
surmounted the precipice on the opposite side of the valley. 
Slowly I advanced, for it was into a region of wonderment as 
well as of beauty: at every step new objects disclosed them- 
selves with a bevaldering profusion ; every turn opened out a 
longer perspective of white crags and rocks jutting out to rocks; 
and every rift in the mountain walls at each side revealed some 
distant peak, the base of which was hidden in a cloud, while 
its snowy summit flashed in a separate chasm of azure sky, and 
glanced over its separate gorge into the sacred domain of 
Apollo. 

As we ascended, the air was refreshed with cooler gales from 
the regions of snow, and with the narrowing glen the shadows 
grew more dense. Contrasted indeed with the white rocks at 
the opposite side, and with the small white cloud which was 
occasionally blown into our ravine from a neighboring gorge 
(for each gorge has its own breeze, which wanders through it 
as through the tube of a musical instrument), thos€ shadows, 
dim and watery in all places, lay beneath the projecting ledge, 
dark as a raven's wing. Here and there we passed chambers 
excavated in the cliif, for what purpose it is hard to say. The 
larger looked like rock temples : the smaller were apparently 
vaults for the purpose of interment, constructed perhaps before 
the Greeks began to burn the bodies of the dead. These small 
chapels are all of them perfectly symmetrical and almost quite 
dark. The roof of each consists of an arch in the rock; op- 
posite to the entrance, and at each end, is an oblong hollow, 
excavated out of the stone, and resembling a sarcophagus; and 
over each sarcophagus the rock is vaulted so as to form a sort 



OF GREECE AND TURKEY. 191 

of pall. As we drew nearer to the Delphic shrine these monu- 
mental chapels became more numerous; and we passed also 
many cells carved in the rock^ and plainly intended for votive 
offerings. Here and there we came upon blocks of hewn 
stones, and the substructions of mighty walls; as if the plat- 
forms had once been crowned with temples, or as if some race 
past away, taking the hint from nature, had converted the 
symmetrical terraces of mountain and cliff into a more regular 
architecture. 

An hour after we had entered the glen we arrived at the vil- 
lage of Castri, built in the neighborhood, if not on the site of 
Delphi. The ancient city breaks up here and there through 
the new village like round stones in a road gradually displac- 
ing the gravel with which they had been covered, or some in- 
destructible religion forcing its way back through younger 
superstitions. Wandering among its narrow streets I frequently 
came ujaon a gigantic capital pointing its polished traceries 
through the weeds that had grown over it, or a fragment of a 
cornice carved as delicately as if it had been an altar. In 
many places indeed the houses were half new and half old; 
the lower portions of the walls, or at least the foundations, con- 
sisting of the ancient masonry, upon which was piled a modern 
superstructure of pebbles, mud, wood, and straw. The effect 
was singular, and reminded me that thus also the whole of the 
domestic and social system of G-reece had apparently rested 
upon the foundation of its great religious ideas — ^a circumstance, 
however, by no means peculiar to the Grecian, or indeed to 
any ancient polity. The situation of Castri thus nested high 
among its rocks, much resembles that of a Swiss village seated 
on some aerial elevation, amid its gray ledges and its grassy 
slopes. The difference, however, is as striking as the similarity, 
and consists in that marvelous union of luxuriance with subli- 
mity which characterizes Greek scenery. Around Castri, in 



192 PICTURESQUE SKETCHES 

place of orcliarcls white with apple blossoms and rough with 
knotted sprays, was the green and golden lemon grove, with 
pale yellow' fruit, and smooth leaves, the younger of them 
translucid. The little lawns amid the cliffs were waving with 
anemones, (the thinnest floral texture almost that can sustain 
the weight of color), not set in orderly array with flax and 
peas. The breeze, heavy from the orange bower, was met by 
the healthier sea-scented gale, which snatched a blossom from 
the almond tree^ or dropped the feather from an eagle's wing 
upon the breast of the myrtle thicket. 

A very short distance farther on is the sacred cleft, close to 
which stood the oracular shrine, and out of which issued that 
intoxicating vapor upon which Apollo once scattered, as was 
deemed, the might of inspiration. The cleft is a narrow chasm 
in the rocks, which in this place very nearly approach each 
other, and are quite smooth. Its length is considerable; gra- 
dually its breadth diminishes ; and it is so lofty, that the sky 
seen above it looks like a strip of purple ribbon. Adjoining 
this cleft, was the Temple of Apollo ; the face of the rock, at 
right angles with the chasm, was the inner wall of that temple, 
and not only retains the mark of the chisel, but is also different 
in color from the rest. Its vast tablet is still sacred from 
weather-stains and from vegetation ; but its summit and its 
edges are fringed with yellow flowers of a kind which I have 
not seen elsewhere, and of which I carried away a handful as 
relics. 

No other trace of the Oracular Temple remains. It is gone, 
with all its sacred treasures and mysteries. We look in vain 
for the mystic tripod, from which the Pythia who had breathed 
the inspiring vapor, flung abroad her prophecies in agonistic 
ecstacies that terrified the priests who beheld lier, and some- 
times deprived her of life, its shrine no longer contains the 
gifts of kings, Asiatic and European, or the trembling elliptical 



OP GREECE AND TURKEY. 193 

stone, supposed to have been the centre of the earth, the spot 
at which met the two doves which Jupiter had loosed from the 
opposite extremities of the world. As vainly do we look for 
the triple serpent of brass, found in the Persian camp after the 
battle of Marathon, and deposited here for centuries. Yet 
Delphi has still its memorials, though when you seek the Ora- 
cular Temple (the heart of the Greek religion), you find, as on 
the site of the Eleusinian mysteries, a blank. Such a blank is 
perhaps not to be regretted : the ardent desire that a visible 
memorial existed, is in itself a spiritual memorial; and the 
chief sanctuaries of ancient religion, if obliterated, have at least 
escaped a worse profanation. That fane, the opening of whose 
gates each spring shook the ancient world with hope and fear, 
and sent a tremor of expectation through the hearts of kings, 
fell, and no one knows when : — it slid from its basis into obli- 
vion without a sound, like the nest of the bird that built amid 
its eaves. The treasury of Croesus, memorable for his piety as 
for his wealth, is gone also; and we look in vain for the three 
thousand statues, brazen, golden, and marble, which once 
adorned the streets of Delphi. The Hall of the Amphictyonic 
Council, the political centre of Grreece, and the body whose 
decrees every Hellenic State had vowed to enforce by arms, 
has also disappeared. Some traces of an ancient Stadium are 
still visible, as well as many fragments of the city walls. The 
chief memorial, however, of classic times and mythic dreams is 
one which nature created and which nature maintains, renew- 
ing it momently as it fleets away — the Castalian foimt. Fed 
from above by the Parnassian snows, it sparkles and chimes in 
the basin hewn for it out of the rock ; and falling from the 
lofty region on which Delphi stood into the ravine which we 
had tracked in our way thither, mingles its waters with the 
river Pleistus, and after receiving some tributary streams, 
winds through the plain of Cirrha, and finds its rest in the 
17 



194 . PICTURESQUE SKETCHES 

waters of the Crissean bay. I drank of it, and washed both 
face and bands in it. Whether it still confers the gift of poetic 
inspiration, as when the Muses danced around it, I cannot say : 
I can assert, however, that purer or fresher water is not to be 
found. 



OF GREECE AND TURKEY. 195 



CHAPTER XIY. 

RETURN FROM DELPHI. 

Character of Parnassian scenery — An olive wood — A Storm — Dance of 
the Greek boatmen — Revels on the shore by night — Moonrise — Phi- 
losophy of the oracle — Demoniacal inspiration — An unnecessary sup- 

, position — An imperfect faith ever placed in oracles — Physical effects 
of the Delphic vapor — 'An extraordinary penetration assisted by im- 
posture. 

Lulled by tlie sound of the Castalian fountain, and cooled 
by its freshness after the pleasant fatigue of a long ascent, I 
lay on the grass in a sort of dreamy state, half asleep and half 
awake, until the day was far advanced, and my guides were 
eager to return. I bade adieu to Delphi, not without regret ; 
but yet with a strong sense that there is less cause for regret in 
leaving what is of first-rate than what is of inferior excellence ; 
because, in the former case, one carries away recollections that 
can never die, and thoughts perhaps the seed of brighter visions 
than those which we have lost. On my way to Delphi I was 
hurried forward by my impatience : on my way back I was glad 
to loiter longer, and thus had more opportunities of studying 
the scenery. That scenery united qualities which Nature alone 
can combine without confusion, presenting, as it were, the 
essence of all species of material beauty elevated and enlivened 
by a spirit peculiarly its own. I have already remarked on its 
union of sublimity with richness : not less remarkable seemed 
to me its union of mystery with joyousness. Its beetling cliffs 
and promontories looming through cloud, affected the spirits 



196 PICTURESQUE SKETCHES 

with nothing of mountain melancholy ; its snowy ranges looked 
neither ghostly nor forlorn. For this circumstance it is not 
easy to account, but we can at least explain it in part. There 
were no pine forests^ with their moi^rnful sighs and monotonous 
whispers ; there were no glaciers to speak of endless winter 
colder than the grave. These mountains, lofty as they are, 
wear the sunny livery of the south, and opening out their breasts 
to a southern exposure, seem to enjoy a double portion of the 
Sun-Grod's favor. From this circumstance, as well as from the 
liglit color of their rocks, whose smooth expanse reflects the 
light like a shield, and from the glorious pageantry of the ve- 
getation wherever a flower can find room to grow, arises the fact 
that, from the countless peaks of snow that sparkle above you 
to the crocus at your feet, the character of the scene is jubilant, 
not less than sublime ; that it lifts up the soul without ever 
casting down the heart; and that, though from its complexity 
it is bewildering, it yet never oppresses the spirits with awe. 
The Sun-G-od looks through the mountain labyrinth as through 
his own laurel, and drowns its terrors in light. Had it not 
been for these peculiar attributes, the scene would never have 
been frequented and celebrated by the Greek. As in some 
specimens of the Italian Gothic, an attempt was made to blend 
with that character of infinitude which belongs to Gothic archi- 
tecture, an ornate beauty of detail and an elevated festivity, so, 
in- these Delphic mountains, nature seems resolved to astonish 
and entrance without subduing. The mystery is lightened, but 
the marvel remains. 

This hilarity of effect was more observable on my return from 
Delphi than on my way thither, because, as we descended the 
hills,- the ravine widened before us, letting in, every moment, a 
larger, as v^ell as a more various view. At every step the 
mountains about the sea were clustered in new and more fan- 
tastic combinations; while^ gleaming through their glens, the 



OP GREECE AND TURKEY. 197 

Grulf of Lepanto appeared now like a river, now like a sea, and 
now like a series of lakes, various in size, and apparently at 
different elevations. This part of the Parnassian scenery is 
the most wonderful, but not, I think, the most beautiful. The 
most exquisite spot, I should say, is to be found a little beyond 
the line where the mountain crescent sinks into the plain, and 
at the confluence of the three ravines. Here spreads the olive- 
wood, through which I passed in the morning. On my return 
I had more time to explore it, and in its heart I discovered a 
scene which I found it difficult to leave. It was a little lawn 
formed by one of the openings in the wood, richly carpeted by 
flowers, and looked down into through woodland gaps by many 
a peak of snow. Through this lawn the two streams already 
named pursued their way from Parnassus to the sea. Obstructed 
in their course by some rocks, they divided into innumerable 
rivulets, which, branching abroad in all directions, veined the 
gravelly ground with silver, now gliding side by side in their 
beds, now mingling, now crossing each other, but ever inter- 
weaving their songs as well as their dance. One might have 
fancied that all the nymphs of ancient mythology had met in 
this peaceful spot to keep some high festival : indeed, as they 
conversed together, I could almost imagine that I followed the 
current of their stories, attending as I did to their voices as 
they changed from grave to gay. iVmong them rose a flower- 
ing laurel — shapely as Daphne herself. It was a tree, not a 
shrub; a daughter of the forest, slender and stately, with glassy 
leaves brilliant as the ripples of those streams, and boughs that 
could not ward off the strong Phoebean shafts. Round this 
laurel the streams raced, and round many a juniper and feathery 
tamarisk, and by many a bank white with narcissi. All round 
the wood the mountains extended their arms; and the sea, 
heard faintly from the distance, curved inwards as though to 

17* 



198 PICTURESQUE SKETCHES 

meet it. If I could have built a temple by a wish it would 
have been in this open space. 

With so much to detain me by the way, it was not till eve- 
ning that I rejoined my boat's crew on shore. I soon found 
that had I returned earlier it would have profited me nothing. 
The sound of the sea which I had heard from afar was an omen of 
commotion, though at that time there was little wind. Before 
I had gained the beach the gale had broken loose, and nothing 
could induce the sailors to weigh anchor. The Greeks are 
expert sailors; but their coast has too many bays, inlets, and 
harbors, to allow of their being bold : and, like men who are 
rich in alternatives, they are deficient in resolution. Late in 
the evening, finding that nothing was to be done, I landed 
again, leaving half a dozen boatmen on board, beside two or 
three peasants, to whom I had promised a passage to the other 
side of the gulf. I paced up and down by the sea shore for an 
hour, during which the crew slept in the boat. Suddenly they 
awoke, and cheering up with the simultaneous impulse of a 
choir of birds when the shower has passed, began, not to sing 
like those birds, but to dance with a zeal, or rather a fury, not 
to be described. Flinging themselves into a circle, they gesticu- 
lated with wild impassionate grace, each man wielded his body 
as if it had been the thyrsus of a Bacchanal. A song rose up 
among them which seemed to throw fresh fuel on tlie flame ; 
and for hours the dance raged, as Homer says, " With the 
might of inextinguishable fire.'^ I watched them till it was 
dark, and till I could see them only by the light of the torches 
which they had suspended in several parts of the boat. The 
later it grew the higher they bounded, and the more swiftly 
their circles revolved. You might have fancied that Bacchus 
and his wood-gods had mingled invisibly with the crew, and 
amused themselves from time to time by lifting the living wheel, 
and spinning it round. As they descended again on the deck 



OF GREECE AND TURKEY. 199 

after each bound, the little boat plunged beneath them, sending 
a ripple in among the reeds, and dashing with spray the sea- 
pink with which the margin was braided. 

That spray ere long began to glitter with a pale blue ra- 
diance, for the moon, which had long since sent two broad, 
diverging beams aloft into the sky, swam up at last with a 
wide and perfect circle above the black eastern steeps of Par- 
nassus, and, gliding on from cloud to cloud, cast a fitful illu- 
mination upon the snows that covered its western terraces. 
This apparition only called up a louder song ; and it is singu- 
lar enough that, though the revelers danced together with per- 
fect regularity, there was hardly any attempt at time or mea- 
sure in their chaunt. Every man exercised his private judg- 
ment on this subject, and the music consequently was edifying, 
rather from its independence than from its harmony. Not- 
withstanding this defect, the dance was not more remarkable 
for its fierceness than for its grace, and the beauty dashed 
across its tempestuous movements, like that of forest branches 
waving in a storm. After the rising of the moon the people 
on the shore, resolving not to be outdone, assembled also, and 
amused themselves with game after game. One of their sports 
I remember thinking a dangerous precedent in revolutionary 
times. A number of men ranged themselves in a ring, while 
another set clambered up, and stood on their shoulders. 
Matters being thus prepared, the ring below began to spin 
round on its own axis with a gradually increasing velocity, the 
exalted personages above maintaining their footing as long as 
they could, but being, of course, one by one, tossed from their 
uneasy pedestals ere long. The dethroned powers then took 
their places beneath, those who had previously supported them 
mounting their shoulders, on the principle that " turn about 
is fair play." Such a social amusement must be as dangerous 
a thing as that great Revolutionist, the French Shrug ', and if 



200 PICTURESQUE SKETCHES 

I were a constitutional king, endeavoring to administer free 
institutions (under wKich people never can take a joke, and 
often insist upon making inferences), I would discourage it to 
the utmost of mj power. The dance ended as suddenly as it 
had begun; and in a few minutes the people on the shore had 
dispersed, and those in the boat were asleep. 

For another hour I continued to pace up and down along 
the beach, watching the clouds which raced and huddled across 
the sky, and that gleaming haven as still as glass, though the 
tempest raged around the rocks that enclosed it. At last I 
lay down, my head resting against a tree* large enough to 
shelter me from such gusts as found entrance there. I endea- 
vored to sleep, but could not, for the memory of an eventful 
day pressed upon me; and many a scene, which at the moment 
I had hardly noted, passed before my eyes. Such a day is 
fruitful of thoughts also as well as of images. When one 
visits a scene richly stored with human interests, the imagina- 
tion opens itself out first to all the impressions that haunt it ; 
but the understanding comes forward in turn with its inquest, 
and asks, " But how did it all happen ? How might it, 
under the like circumstances, come about again ?" In the 
case of Delphi and the oracle such questions are not easily 
answered. It is not difficult to understand how such scenery 
as that of the mountains in whose bosom Delphi is enshrined, 
shook the G-reek imagination out of its accustomed Epicurean- 
ism, winged it for a higher flight, and in place of gay legends 
and palpable shapes, peopled the spangled lawns, and shadowy 
recesses, and glory-smitten rocks, with the visions of a more 
spiritual worship. But it is not so easy to determine what 
it was which preserved for the oracle its credit from age to 
age. Neither that keen insight which belonged to the Glreek 
intelligence, nor those traditionary records of early religion, 
which imparted so much of philosophic truth to the Greek 



OF GREECE AND TURKEY. 201 

mytbology, could have extended any aid to tbe Pythoness 
when consulted concerning simple matters of fact. Are we 
then to account for the oracles by imputing them merely to 
priestcraft, or after the fashion of those in early Christian 
times, who attributed them to inspiration, but to the inspi- 
ration of Evil Spirits ? The latter supposition, I confess, 
seems to me unwarranted, because it is needless. " Nee 
diabolus intersit nisi dignus vindice nodus. ^' The evil spirit, 
and great enemy of the human race, has shrines enough 
in human hearts without our allotting him one at Delphi ; 
and human credulity seems sufficient to account for the be- 
lief, so long reposed in a response which had always an 
even chance of turning out true, and which, taking into 
account the degree in which the event is determined by 
our expectations, had commonly many chances in its favor. 

Coleridge, discussing the authenticity of ghost stories, and 
apparitions, opposes them by a very singular argument. It is 
to this effect. We cannot have sufficient cause to believe in 
the truth of an apparition, if the man who asserts that he has 
seen it is himself not certain about it. Now that his belief is 
a matter of imaginative persuasion, not of intellectual or prac- 
tical certainty, may be inferred from the fact that, while many 
persons have lost their senses from terror, when a ghost trick 
has been played off at their expense, no one has ever gone mad 
from the sight of an apparition not thus presented to him. 
What the imagination conjures up, the imagination can deal 
with, half believing it, and, at the same time, not thoroughly 
convinced of its reality, though, perhaps, not conscious of a 
doubt. If, on the other hand, it is not the imagination of the 
beholder, but the intervention of another person, whicL has 
raised up the supposed apparition, the belief with which it is 
beheld, though ill-founded, is yet a hona fide belief, and, such 
being the case, a visitation from the world of spirits is some- 



202 PICTURESQUE SKETCHES 

thing too dreadful to be borne. An argument in some measure 
analogous may be adduced against the inspiration of oracles, to 
whatever source that inspiration be attributed. Why should 
we believe in them, if they neither thoroughly believed in them- 
selves, nor were thoroughly believed in by those who consulted 
them? Now, that they had not full confidence in their own 
answers, may be inferred from the fact that those answers were 
so often susceptible of a double interpretation. There is good 
reason to think, also, that those who appealed to the oracles 
had not a perfect faith in them, although, as in the mood in 
which men witness a dramatic representation, they may not 
have consciously disbelieved. Their latent incredulity may be 
inferred from the circumstance that, if the oracular response 
threatened them with some dreadful calamity, they always, in- 
stead of submitting to their fate as inevitable, endeavored to 
escape it. It is thus that enthusiasts who assert that the end 
of the world is to take place within a few years, buy, sell, and 
carry on their ordinary transactions, notwithstanding, much 
like other people 3 the fact being, not that they believe what 
they assert, but that they think that they believe it. If, then, 
even in the time of oracles, belief in oracular inspiration was 
less a reality than it seemed, there is little reason why we 
should entertain it now, and impute them to a diabolical agency. 
We know, moreover, that, without the interposition of spi- 
ritual Powers, there existed physical influences in connection 
with the Delphic oracle quite sufficient, if backed by imagina- 
tion and credulity, to produce important effects. The vapors 
which ascended at the Delphic cleft affected not only huraati 
beings, but the animal creation; so much so, that shepherds 
were first led to the spot by observing that the goats who ap- 
proached it were filled with a strange delirium. Such trans- 
ports may not unnaturally be supposed to have had the effect 
of electrifying the energies, and sharpening the penetration, of 



OP GREECE AND TURKEY. 203 

the Pythoness. There are, unquestionably, peculiar states of 
body, such as the phenomena of Mesmerism exhibit, in which, 
to say the least, our ordinary faculties are much extended and 
refined. In such cases the patient, who has a morbid desire 
of exercising to the utmost his special privileges, and who, far 
from being a mere impostor, has probably an exaggerated con- 
fidence in his gifts, sees more than his neighbors could see, 
but yet does not scruple to make up for any deficiency in his 
powers by deception. To imposture he may, indeed, resort, 
without a distinct purpose to that effect, considering the unna- 
tural state, especially as regards his consciousness, into which 
he has been thrown; and he will be greatly aided in carrying 
out the deception, through the desire secretly felt by specta- 
tors to witness a marvel. The Pythoness, possessed, as she 
undoubtedly was, by a peculiar afflatus, may thus also, with 
respect to circumstances with which she was imperfectly ac- 
quainted, at once have exercised an insight not usually hers, 
and, at the same time, have backed that insight by equivocal 
answers, and by trickery of other sorts. In this she was, pro- 
bably, assisted by the ministering priests, who, notwithstand- 
ing, may have sincerely believed in her supernatural powers. 
Without more of conscious bad faith, she would be aided by 
the inquirers themselves: — finally, she would be assisted by 
the fortunes of men, which culminate or decline with their 
hopes and fears ; and of her failures the world would hear little, 
while ample credit was given to her for chance coincidences. 

If there be truth in this view of the matter, the oracular 
response was indebted for its credit neither to supernatural in- 
spiration, nor mainly to priestcraft, but to that species of men- 
tal illumination which latently exists in our nature, and to that 
imaginative credence, distinct alike from conviction and from 
conscious skepticism, which has its root in the human heart, and 
finds innumerable means of confirming its impressions. Alloyed 



204 PICTURESQUE SKETCHES 

the oracle must have been by baser influenceSj like the other 
parts of a religion which^ not founded on the strength of truth, 
was frequently reduced to throw itself on the strength of false- 
hood. It does notj however, follow that its influence did not 
on the whole tend to good, as the belief in apparitions has pro- 
bably done. The seat of its power was chiefly in the imagina- 
tion; and that faculty, passing to and fro through man's whole 
being, and interpreting between its difi'erent portions, rests in 
the main on the moral sense, and is, therefore, an avenger of 
evil, and an inciter to all good works. 



OF GREECE AND TURKEY. 205 



CHAPTER XV. . 

VOYAGE FROM DELPHI TO PATRAS. 

Continuance of the storm — Ineffectual attempt to put to sea — -Parnas- 
sian harbor — Another vain attempt at navigation — Coast scenery of 
Parnassus — Sunsets during a week of storm— Arrival at Lepanto — 
A calm — Reflections on Greece— -The advantages derived from its 
small size — Proximity of its rival States — Benefits from compression 
— Variety of Greek Institutions — Character of the Greek Confederation 
— Benefits resulting from the Independence of its several States — Ad- 
vantages which the Republican principle derived from the small size 
of the Greek States — The Athenian Government no Democracy — Ar- 
rival at Patras — Departure of the Austrian steamer — Return to Corfu. 

At a very early hour the next morning I woke (those who 
sleep on as rough a bed are likely to wake early), and insisted 
upon casting loose and trying what we could do at sea. We 
effected but little ; the gale was still violent, beside being right 
in our teeth : and after beating about for some time, and 
watching a stormy sunrise as it broke through the driving mist 
and reddened foam, we were obliged to let go our sheets, run 
before the wind, and take refuge in another bay on the indented 
coast, within a few miles of Salona. Again we fastened the 
boat to a rock, and I made a solitary expedition among the 
mountains, notwithstanding the assurances of my boatmen that 
if I fell in with robbers they would cut off my nose and ears by 
way of a practical joke. I should not have quarreled with an 
adventure less lasting in its consequences, and might not, in- 
deed, have objected to losing the very small amount of money 
18 



20Q PICTURESQUE SKETCHES 

wMch I carried in my pockety on condition of making acquaint- 
ance with some tolerably interesting specimens of the banditti 
kind, I neither met, however, nor expected an adventure of 
any' sort, but enjoyed instead a succession of views as noble as 
rocks, mountains, and waves, in their wildest combinations can 
compose. The sea rendered it impossible that I should lose 
my way; and indeed I could generally discern the bay in which 
our little boat lay rocking. I was, therefore, able to wander 
far about those plains which, grassy and flat, wound in among 
the roots of the precipitous mountains. Wearied enough to 
sleep well I returned at evening to my faithful boatmen, who 
made as many demonstrations of joy on my rejoining them as 
if we had been friends all our lives, and, lying down on the 
shingles in the bottom of the boat, slept till the morning. 

The next day the storm was more violent than ever, and for 
several hours my boatmen declined any experiment of the sea 
beyond the rocks which gave us shelter. With philosophical 
good humor, and an indifference to delay, which would seem 
almost miraculous in the western world, where leisure is a 
thing seldom known, and where men have lost the power of 
making idleness amusing or instructive, they roamed up and 
down the shore picking up shells. At first I did not under- 
stand what thus had inspired them with a sudden interest in 
conchology : but I soon discovered that the shells contained 
fishes, and that my crew were collecting their breakfast. They 
offered me a share of their spoils ; but their repast was as unin- 
viting as if it had consisted of snails, which their fishes much 
resembled ; and I preferred ray own fare. Although, however, 
we had abundance of tea, there was neither a tea-pot to be 
found nor a kettle to boil water in. I was a little disconcerted 
at the prospect of being obliged to live, no one could guess how 
]ong, upon shell-fish. My ingenious servant, however, came 
to my aid, and his quick wits set everything right before long. 



or GREECE AND TURKEY. 207 

After a short search he discovered in the boat a small cup of 
iron. He found also some dry branches with which he kindled 
a fire on the stones in the bottom of the boat. Filling the cup 
with water, flinging a hanclfal of tea into it, and then placing it 
on the fire, I soon had a cup of tea, which was not much the 
worse for being drunk out of the vessel in which it was boiled. 
The discovery was a useful one, as for several days I had no 
other food. 

Favored by a lull in the course of the day, we put to sea 
once more ; but the storm had ceased for an hour only to take 
breath and renew its energies; and we soon found it impossible 
not only to make way toward Patras, but even to run across to 
the opposite side of the gulf, where we might have procured 
horses. Now, for the first time, I began to suspect I might 
miss the Austrian steamer, which calls at Patras once a fort- 
night. To provide against accidents I had allowed five days 
for a journey, which is often made in twelve hours; but several 
of those days had already passed away. Notwithstanding, I 
had seen enough of Austrian steamers to place a very firm re- 
liance on their unpunctuality, and soon consoled myself by the 
assurance that even if I were a day late in arriving at Patras, 
the steamboat was certain to be later still. I carried Delphi 
still in my heart, and had no objection to a few more rambles 
among the mountains in its vicinity. This was, ere long, a 
matter as to which we had no choice. Far off in the west the 
waters suddenly assumed that blackness more than ^^wine- 
black," which always makes a Greek sailor think it high time 
to run for the nearest harbor. The cloud descended over what, 
amid a lurid sky, had seemed to be the luminous portal of the 
storm. Again we got the boat before the wind, and in good 
time, for within a few minutes the gale swooped upon its prey, 
and rushed past us, raking the dark waters into foam. We 
had lost, within a quarter of an hour, what it had taken us ten 



208 PICTURESQUE SKETCHES 

times as long to gain, and racing along merrily, though against 
our will; soon found ourselves anchored in a narrow creek. My 
servant; who always assumed, though very unwarrantably, that 
I was much incensed at these disappointments, made his usual 
apologies for the weather of his country : " Such a thing,^^ he 
assured me, hardly ever happened — " never, except by acci- 
dent; and never should occur again as long as he was in my 
service. We should take excellent horses at the other side 
next morning — that is, if we could run across in the night." 

I passed another afternoon wandering about the green shores,, 
buffeted by wind and wave, or climbing the rocks, in whose 
caves the surge murmured with that subterranean thunder, of 
all music the deepest and the grandest, or listening in the hol- 
low of the creek to a softer sound — 

" That ]if;;htest murmur of its seething foam, 
Like armies whispering where great echoes be."* 

Sometimes I walked out upon a series of dark, flat ledges which 
stretched far into the sea, like the substructions of a mountain 
swept away. Over its remote western ridge the waves sent a 
bowery spray which, rising at regular intervals, until it veiled 
the sinking sun and yellow west, descended again without noise, 
or a noise unheard in the distance. All around, amid these 
ledges, were countless sea-wells, the smaller of them just large 
enough for a bath, the larger extending into little lakes, but all 
of them so calm that the long weeds hardly waved within their 
green pellucid depths, into which you might have fancied that 
you need but dip an arm in order to pick up a shell, though it 
would have required an expert diver to reach their bottom. 
The contrast between the elemental agitation all around the 
reef, and the serenity of those glassy cloisters within it, exer- 

* Sonnets by Charles Tennyson. 



OF GREECE AND TURKEY. 209 

cised a deep fascination. I could have been well consoled for 
the various delays unexpectedly thrown in my way if cheered 
only by the sunsets which glorified successively the storm of 
that week. Through windy gaps in the skies they tinged the 
sea-foam and the snowy ranges beyond the gulf, with sanguine 
streaks, bathing at the same time in gold the dewy thickets and 
green fields on the shore, and shooting a crimson beam from 
rock to rock and from cloud to cloud, along the confused and 
ragged limits of the mountain coast. Long after the fiery orb 
had sunk, and the ferment had waned from the western waters, 
the summits of the mountains suffered no other change than 
that from crimson to rose-color, and again to lilac. The clouds 
in the highest regions hung suspended and almost as motion- 
less, though drawn out into a feathery softness, and filled with 
radiance, as if their golden neeces had drunk up the last light 
of day, while beneath them the lower vapors rushed in direc- 
tions determined by their elevation, the lowest of all streaming 
along the misty current of the storm, and almost brushing the 
green sea. 

The fifth morning after our departure from Corinth, as the 
moon was dropping into the sea, I prevailed on the boatmen to 
try our chances once more. After blustering about us for an 
hour, the wind changed in our favor. Ere long the peaks on 
each side of the gulf made report of approaching sunrise, pro- 
claiming with banner and standard, like so many successive he- 
ralds, the advent of the solemnity ; and in a few minutes more 
a fulgent sphere of waters seemed to lift itself slightly up in the 
east, as if drawn from its level by the attraction of that mighty 
luminary which had but just detached itself from the deep. 
Before eleven o'clock we were drifting past the old walls of 
Lepanto. We were now within ten miles of Patras, and already 
I triumphed in the prospect of arriving just in time, and that 
without having lost anything by the way, or having set out an 

18* 



210 PICTURESQUE SKETCHES 

hour too soon. Suddenly tlie wind fell, and in a few minutes 
more there was a dead calm. The boatmen took out their oars 
and pulled hard, and my servant assured me I was all safe, for 
that after such a storm the Austrian steamer could not he 
within three days of its time. I believed him ; and as we 
rowed slowly through sunny waters, almost calm in the shelter 
of the promontories, and elsewhere but slightly swaying with a 
smooth and sleepy motion, the memorial of perturbation past, 
my thoughts visited again and again the wonderful scenes I had 
visited. 

It is when traveling in Greece that we practically appreciate 
the marvelously minute scale upon which that country was 
moulded, the moral influences of which were destined to extend 
all over the world. You may look at the map and forget this 
circumstance ; but it is brought effectually home to you when 
during a few days* ride you visit one after another a series of 
rival states, which in their politics, their social character, and 
their histories, were as distinct as the various kingdoms of 
Europe now are. It was not till I had sailed for a few miles 
from Lutrarki, and observed the greater clearness with which 
the Parnassian ranges came out, that I realized the fact that 
Corinth and Delphi, two cities morally as opposed to each other 
as Washington and Mecca, were yet physically so close that the 
laughter of the midnight revelers might almost have met the 
hymns of the priests midway on the waters. What, again, 
could be more different than the character of Beotia, sacerdotal, 
traditionary, unchanging, the Hellenic Austria, and that of the 
inventive and mercurial Attica? And yet from the same ridge 
of Parnes the shepherd descried the capitals of both. How re- 
mote from each other in character were Sparta, in which the 
whole life of man was one perpetual military discipline, and 
Athens, in which every one went on his own business after his 
own fashion. Yet the mariner ran across, in perhaps a day's 



OF GREECE AND TURKEY. 211 

sail^from the one territory to the other, passing on his way 
communities equally unlike both. How contrasted were the 
various states of the Peloponnesus, for century after century 
at war; and yet from the summits of Maenalus, the wandering 
rhapsodist, placed immediately above Palantium, the city of 
Pallas and Evander, and the mother of Rome herself, beheld 
them all, or nearly all — the maritime cities of the Achaian 
league — the sacred plain of Elis, in which Greece celebrated its 
heroic games — pastoral and musical Arcadia, the Tyrol of 
Greece — the valleys dear to liberty of the much suffering Mes- 
senians, its Switzerland — the walled territory and unwalled city 
of Sparta — Epidaurus, the sanctuary of the sick — Argolis, the 
most venerable of all in its associations, and its monuments, on 
which the Greek looked as we look on our Roman or Druidical 
remains. If, crossing the Gulf of Lepanto, he passed from the 
Parnassian to the Pindan range, and Q^ta, the mountain of 
Hercules, he looked down on the one side on the Thessalian 
valleys, on Dolopia and Phthiotis, on Doris and Phocis, and 
the plains of the Locrians ; and on the other, on the valleys of 
Epirus, on j^tolia and Acharnania; he might have seen 
Thermopylae, the gate of Greece, and Delphi its sanctuary : far 
off he might have discerned Actium and Pharsalia, on which 
the destinies of the Roman world were to be decided ; and 
more near, those quiet vales refreshed by the winding waters of 
the Achelous and Aous, and Arachthus, of Enipeus, and Pe- 
neus and Haliacmon, and a hundred streams besides famous in 
ancient song. 

We are too apt to connect the idea of greatness with that of 
extent. Unwieldy vastness, on the contrary, is a source of 
weakness, and the most enormous empires have lain inert and 
barren for centuries, their mind being, as it were, insufficient 
to wield the huge and cumbrous body through which it was 
languidly diffused. The same confinement which is required 



212 PICTURESQUE SKETCHES 

to give explosive force to gunpowder is equally necessary to 
realize the might of human energies, which, without such com- 
pression would run to waste. Concentration is always force ; 
and the mere number of men needed in order to produce the 
most wonderful results is inconsiderable. We can easily, in- 
deed, observe various modes in which the greatness of the 
Grecian states was eminently promoted by the narrow limits of 
each. A population comparatively dense made it necessary 
that government should be strong ; while at the same time 
among races so enlightened it was equally necessary that the 
strong government should be just and liberal also. To prevent 
that population from becoming excessive, much of prudence, 
of forethought, and of self-command must have been needed in 
forming the ties of life, as well as much of industry in agricul- 
ture and commerce, and much of enterprise in colonization — a 
moral and political education thus ever advanced side by side. 
Once more, races kept apart by mighty ranges of mountains 
necessarily became rivals ; but it was their propinquity to each 
other which made that rivalship which stimulated their ener- 
gies felt practically and from day to day. The wars between 
state and state, moreover, were by no means like ordinary 
border warfare ; — -they were humanized by a common Hellen- 
ism, and had no tendency to barbarize. Neither did they re- 
semble civil wars ; — on the contrary, in each community, the 
distinct integrity of which was commonly guaranteed by its 
geographical situation, a close political organization and strong 
social sympathies, far from suffering any disruption or dis- 
traction, were rendered yet more necessary by a common 
danger, and a glory in which each man had his part. In con- 
junction with military virtues, moral energies, and political 
duties, it always happens that the mental and imaginative 
powers receive their best development; so it was in Grreece, 



OP GREECE AND TURKEY. 213 

and the rival states, like forest trees, acquired a loftier stature 
because they had not room to spread. 

How wonderful was the variety of politics exhibited in that 
narrow compass ! As if Greece, in its political relations, had 
been intended to present an epitome of Europe, as Europe does 
of the Wprld, there exists no form of government, theocratical, 
monarchical, or republican, aristocratic, democratic, or military, 
of which her little states did not furnish examples. As if, also, 
the history of Greece had been destined to constitute a com- 
pendium of all history, these various forms of government were 
now allowed a gradual development, now brought into sudden 
antagonism, and now allowed to change into each other, or to 
combine their several elements in the most various propor- 
tions. Not only was Greece providentially built up into a 
university in which all nations were to be trained in scien- 
tific lore, and an academy in which the Arts were to find 
a perpetual asylum, but it became also a theatre in which 
human society rehearsed all its parts, and a treasure-house 
in which History was to preserve all its archives and store 
its lessons. To be familiar with the annals of Greece is to 
understand the philosophy of history. Compared with it the 
records of most other nations are but a chronicle of acci- 
dents. In it is contained essentially the inner history of each. 
On that history we look down as on a map ; and it is in- 
telligible to us only because it lies in a narrow limit, and is 
illuminated by a wide and steady light. All that can take 
place intellectually or morally on the globe is but an expansion 
of the struggles that may take place in a single breast. The 
history of a man is the history of a race : the history of a 
race is the history of a world : but in proportion as the 
horizon is widened our eyes are bewildered, and clouds ob- 
scure the scene. The history of human society, epitomized 
in that of Greece, is instructive to us because it is condensed, 



214 PICTURESQUE SKETCHES 

and because in shaking off the sophisms of prolixity and the 
pettiness of barren detail, it stands before us idealized. G-reece, 
considered politically and morally, is like the tent in the 
eastern tale which, when folded, could be carried on a man's 
shoulder, and, when opened out could shelter an army. Nor 
were the rival states of Greece without a true bond- of union, 
though not of political union. In confederations, the great 
problem is commonly supposed to be that of combining mu- 
nicipal independence with political unity. It is not wonder- 
ful that so delicate an experiment should seldom have been 
successfully made. Such, assuredly, was not the character 
of Hellenic unity ; for the Amphictyonic Council, whatever 
its pretensions may have been, had seldom the power of com- 
posing the differences of rival states and averting war. Greece 
was neither a ^^ confederate state'^ nor a confederation of states. 
It was an associated system, or rather family of states, each of 
them, not only municipally but politically independent, yet re- 
volving, all of them, round the common focal points of religion 
and ethical sentiment. Had those states been compressed into a 
real political unity, they would as completely have lost their 
distinctive social characters as the islands of the Cyclades would 
have lost their various and beautiful shapes if squeezed into a 
single island — they would as completely have lost their peculiar 
moral energies as the plates of a Voltaic battery would lose 
their electric power if fused into a common mass. The con- 
necting bond among the Greek states, which were one, if con- 
sidered with reference to the rest of the world, and wholly in- 
dependent if considered with reference to each other, was moral 
and imaginativCj and neither material nor political. A common 
race had founded that union, a common language sustained, 
and common recollections cemented it. The Grecian states 
were clustered into a single system by virtue of the common 
ideas that animated them, as the various countries of Europe 



OF GREECE AND TURKEY. 215 

were once constituted into a whole by that which they held in 
common — the Christian religion — the Roman law— and the 
institute of chivalry. Their centre of union was not a fixed 
spot, but one that changed with every change of movement. 
Now it was found in the Delphic shrine, the meeting point of 
the disturbed : now at Eleusis, where pilgrims from every state 
were initiated : now in the plain of Elis, where all Greece con- 
tended in friendly rivalship, from the hour that the full moon, 
shining upon the marble roof of the Olympian Temple, had 
proclaimed a truce to every war :■ — now amid the Nemean or 
the Isthmian concourse, or in the Temple of Bacchus at 
Athens, when Sophocles or Eschylus struck once more the 
chord left vibrating by the hand of Homer, and reminded 
the spectators from every region that a united Hellas had once 
fought and triumphed on the Asian coasts. 

If, in place of this moral, a material unity had been substi- 
tuted, and Greece had been but one nation, like Italy under 
the Romans, how completely it would have lost its peculiar 
greatness ! Without the emulation of states, each of which 
ran for the prize which but one could receive at a time, and the 
love of glory thus produced, it is probable that its extraordinary 
intellect would never have been roused. A united Greece 
would commonly have been safe from foreign aggression : it 
must, therefore, have devoted itself wholly to the arts of peace, 
and availing itself to the full of those singular commercial ad- 
vantages which its indented coasts and its geographical position 
bestowed, would probably have become a larger Tyre; or like 
its own least glorious city Corinth, would have drowned all that 
was noblest among its attributes in an alternation of industrialism 
and of luxury. Its chief divinities would have been Vulcan 
and Venus; but their marriage is as far from being applauded 
on earth as in heaven. If, on the other hand, inflamed by its 
power, Greece had addicted itself to aggressive wars, it could 



216 PICTURESQUE SKETCHES 

but have founded one of those vulgar empires, of which the 
world has seen enough, and ended — for in such triumphs the 
reaction is equal to the action — in partially sharing the barba- 
rism of the boundless tracts it had conquered. Unqestionably 
if a united Hellas had turned its arms in time to the west, it 
would have founded a western empire in its maturity, as it 
founded an eastern in its decline: — spears of its invincible 
phalanx would have been reflected in the Danube and the 
Rhine, as well as in the Grranicus, and the Roman legion might 
never have been heard of. Had the G-reeks, however, built up 
such an empire, it would have been in place of the more glorious 
dominion which it was given to them alone to found. Their 
imperial power also would not have been as enduring or as 
beneficial as that of the Romans; for they had neither the same 
constancy in their principles of rule, nor the same reverence 
for law. 

The small size of the Greek states is a matter of paramount 
importance, though one often overlooked, when their example 
is cited with respect to forms of government, and in vindication 
of the republican principle. It is chiefly where a large country 
is concerned that the principle of order needs for its support 
that gradation of ranks of which monarchy is the natural apex. 
Where the territory is so narrow and the population so small 
that every man is, as it were, before the eye of the public, 
there, on the other hand, we may most expect to meet with that 
diffusion of public principle and sense of public duty which is 
the first requisite in republics. In a large and populous nation 
every man has the benefit or the temptations of an incognito. 
In a small country, public matters come home to the whole 
community, and whoever discharges public functions is obliged 
to walk in the light. Greece is often cited as a precedent in 
favor of democratic institutions. Many of the Greek republics 
were far enough from being democratic : let us, however, take 



OF GREECE AND TURKEY. 217 

the case of Athens, whose institutions were pre-eminently of a 
popuhir character. In one sense Athens was a democracy, hut 
hardly in the modern sense. The Athenian freemen were few 
in comparison of those inhabitants of Attica who had no politi- 
cal privileges whatever. To the latter class belonged some ten 
thousand strangers and about four hundred thousand slaves. 
Among these the Athenian citizens ranged, a small and select 
body; how small we may imagine when we recollect that Attica 
was about the size of an English county, that half of it con- 
sisted of barren mountain, and the rest of soil by no means 
fertile. In the enjoyment of ample leisure (the hard work of 
the country being performed by their slaves), the small mi- 
nority received the highest intellectual culture then existing, 
from literature, from the fine arts, from social intercourse, and 
from the drama. To such a height was mental refinement 
carried among them that the tragedies and the orations listened to 
by what we call the Athenian populace, are too severe and 
stately wholly to please the literary classes in modern society. 
Athens might as justly be called an academy as a nation, and 
the Athenian government was as far from being a democracy as 
an aristocracy in the modern sense of the word. Where the 
territory is small, where every man is educated and redeemed 
from servile labor, and where external relations are such as to 
cause at once emulation and anxiety; there upon each citizen 
his country has set her seal; and he may fitly be entrusted with 
the charge of her safety. 

About five o'clock in the evening I was suddenly roused from 
my reveries by a sudden exclamation from my servant, who 
clasped his hands in dismay, and wrung them in wrath, crying 
out, " Santa Maria, ecco, per Baceo il vapore !'^ I turned and 
saw above a green headland, which divided us from the harbor 
of Patras, the black standard of the Austrian steamer floating 
far behind her as she steamed out of port. I could hardly be- 
19 



218 PICTURESQUE SKETCHES 

lieve my eyes : but, on landing, I found that it was indeed the 
Austrian packet and no other, which (punctual for once to its 
time, as if from a spirit of contradiction) had left Patras just 
as I reached it. Not a little disconcerted was I at the accident ; 
and indeed, I have often asked myself since how I could have 
been so blinded by travelers' superstitious devotion to his own 
predeterminations, as to have regretted the prospect of another 
fortnight spent in G-reece. I had not, however, much difficulty 
in reconciling myself to my lot, nor did I sleep the worse at 
Patras from having a bed to recline upon. Within a few days 
an English steamer called at Patras, on its way to the Ionian 
Islands; in it I took my passage, and waited at Corfu for the 
arrival of the boats bound for Ancona. 



or GREECE AND TURKEY. 219 



CHAPTER XVI. 

VOYAGE TO CONSTANTINOPLE. 

Sail to Syra — A strange accident — The Lazaretto of Syria — Aspect of 
the city by night — The Island of Syra — Views of the Egean — Sail 
ta Smyrna — Accident by sea — A boat upset — Loss of an anchor — 
'Greek sailor saved — The Bay of Smyrna — The City — Spot of St. Po- 
lycarp's Martyrdom — Views from the hills of Smyrna — Its burial- 
grounds — Bazaar — Mosques — French and Greek Diplomacy — Plain 
of Troy — The Dardanelles — -Sestos — The Seat of Marmora — A Turkish 
woman and her children. 

Having given you, without interruption, an account of my 
rambles in Grreece, I now proceed to relate the incidents of my 
visit to Constantinople. Shortly after my excursion to Mara- 
thon, I resolved to defer all further expeditions in Grreece until 
the season was more advanced, and availed myself of the inter- 
val to visit Constantinople. I took my berth in a French man- 
of-war steamer, the " Mentor" by name, and left the Peireus 
with every prospect of a prosperous voyage. The ship was 
large, clean, and in all respects orderly ; and I could not help 
contrasting it favorably with the Austrian steamers, of which I 
had seen more than enough. Pride, however, will have a fall. 
The second day, we had passed several islands, among others 
Zea and Thermia ; and were rapidly approaching Syra when 
we went down to dinner. A little before the end of our meal, 
the captain, to our no small astonishment, sent us word that 
we must make haste, as the boat was waiting to land us on the 
island. It was in vain that every one who had taken his place 



220 PICTURESQUE SKETCHES 

for Constantinople produced his ticket^ and declared that he 
had no curiosity to see Syra. Nothing further could we make 
out than that the vessel we were in was not going to Constan- 
tinople — that the captain had taken us to Syra for our own 
good — that our fares to Constantinople had been accepted out 
of deference to general principles — that during the night we 
were to be lodged like princes in the Lazaretto — and that, the 
next morning, the vessel which was really proceeding to Con- 
stantinople, would have the honor of waiting on us, and would 
be but too happy to take us to the end of our voyage. 

Where there is no alternative, a man^s deliberations need not 
cost him much time. Gloomily and silently we descended the 
ship's side — a motley, many-colored company — and seated our- 
selves in the little boat. The captain stood at the side of the 
ship, took off his hat, smiled, and made us a short speech, ap- 
parently very obliging, and particularly satisfactory to himself; 
but the splashing of the oars drowned his parting words. What 
they were, therefore, I know not ; but mine, if I had expressed 
my thoughts, would have been — '' Never again will I be such 
a very youthful Telemachus as to cast my lot with a ' Mentor' 
more perJSdious than Circe. ^^ Before we had done ruminating 
dark fancies, and chewing out the luxury of a grievance, we 
discovered that those who complain about trifles are not left 
long without real cause for complaint. Close to the shore, 
where our boat grated against the sand, were ranged a dozen 
dens (for they were not good enough to be called hovels), built 
of pebbles and mud. " There live the fishermen of Syra," I 
remarked : " poor men, I suppose they are out just now pro- 
viding our supper." '^ On the contrary," replied the steers- 
man, " there you must live yourselves for a little time : but 
courage ! you will be as comfortable as possible : the sea never 
comes in." Thinking ourselves in a strange dream, we landed, 
and bent low enough to look into one of these kennels, in which 



OP GREECE AND TURKEY. 221 

tliere was neither floor nor ceiling, nor cliair nor table. There 
it stood — four walls — an abode in the abstract — no particular 
house — a place stripped of impertinences, and free from con- 
ventionalities. In consternation, we recoiled;, fully resolved to 
get on board the boat again, and insist on being received in the 
ship. Already, however, the sailors had pushed oif at the com- 
mand of their steersman, who took his cigar out of his mouth, 
and remarked that the lazaretto seemed faulty from what it 
lacked rather than from what it possessed ! 

Three of these dens being vacant at the time of our arrival, 
I was able to select one in which I had but two companions. 
They stuck a tallow candle against the earthen wall, resolved 
that if the fleas devoured them before morning, at least they 
would "perish in the light." Down they lay, contented, low- 
minded Greeks, with self-respect enough to consider themselves 
as men aggrieved, and were asleep in a few minutes. I found 
it less easy to reconcile myself to my lot, but soon hit upon an 
expedient not sufficiently appreciated, that of conquering vexa- 
tion with fatigue. Accordingly, leaving my companions to 
their dreams, I sallied forth, and walked for hours up and down 
beside the still and gleaming sea. I have seldom seen a more 
picturesque spectacle than the town of Syra presented on that 
occasion. It is placed on a crescent-hill, which rises from the 
water side, just opposite the little island on which the lazaretto 
stands. The whole of this crescent, and also a steep mound on 
its summit, is covered with houses which rise one above another, 
stage beyond stage, like the steps of an amphitheatre. In the 
town there is not a single shutter, the consequence of which 
was that nearly every light was visible from our prison. The 
illumination was reflected in the water, and could not easily be 
exceeded in brilliancy. At an early hour in the morning wea- 
riness crept over me, and I retired to rest. I was awaked by 
the joyful acclamations of my fellow- sufferers, who had already 

19* 



222 PICTURESQUE SKETCHES 

discovered the arrival of the second French steamboat. In a 
few minutes we had tumbled our luggage into a boat^ each man 
rushing to the landing-place with a portmanteau on his shoul- 
der, and rowed alongside. At the bulwarks stood the captain 
and several officers, all very like each other, and all very ugly, 
as I thought, nodding and bowing to us, and whispering to each 
other. Up rose every man in our boat, which swayed about 
till I thought it would have upset- — Greek, Turk, Jew, and Ar- 
menian, and chattered vociferously for about three minutes^ 
each in his own language, making a confusion of tongues in 
which not one word was intelligible. The captain listened 
with much politeness and answered, when the hubbub had sub- 
sided, " Mais, messieurs, certainement V Distrusting so gene- 
ral an assent, I got up in m.y turn, and stated our case to him, 
requesting him to take us to Constantinople. " Impossible," 
was his reply. We were in quarantine, and so should he be if 
he meddled with us. "But you are going to Constantinople, 
the city of the plague." " No matter," was his reply. ^' The 
ship which had brought us thus far came from Alexandria : the 
plague at Alexandria differed from that at Constantinople, and 
far exceeded it in virulence." " But we had been given tickets 
to Constantinople." " No matter ; it must be confessed that 
it was an imprudence to have given them." I made one more 
desperate effort in an oration full of sublimity and pathos, in- 
sisting on the law of nations, the honor of the French flag, in- 
sult to the English nation, and the rights of man, in the midst 
of which the vessel steamed off, splashing us all over with the 
spray from her paddles, the captain and his officers taking off 
their hats, shrugging their shoulders, and lifting up their eye- 
brows into arches steeper than the " Bridge of Sighs" or the 
" Pons asinorura." The last words which I caught were " pau- 
vres diables," from the captain, and " enfin c'est egal" from 
the officer next him. Nothinn; remained but to row back to 



OF GREECE AND TURKEY. 228 

tlie lazaretto, -wliich accordingly we did, the Greeks tossing 
back their heads with scornful laughter, the Armenians and Jews 
gesticulating with rage, while a solemn Turk who said nothing, 
evidently thought the more, twisting his beard in his hand, 
glancing after the ship with lurid eyes, and evidently wishing 
for a sword ! 

On returning to the lazaretto, the first thing we discovered 
was that, during our brief absence, a hundred and fifty pilgrims, 
on their way to a saintly shrine in a neighboring island, had 
taken possession of our dens. There we stood, a group for a 
painter, with our portmanteaus on our shoulders, our bags in 
our hands, bitter indignation swelling in our hearts, and our 
eyes fixed in jealous amazement upon the strangers who had 
contrived -to rob us of our hitherto detested homes. In reply 
to our inquiries and reproaches, the authorities told us that 
there was still one small room unoccupied at the top of the 
lazaretto, into which we might pack ourselves if we pleased ; 
on the other hand, we were equally free, if we preferred it, to 
squeeze ourselves into our old kennels. We cast another de- 
spairing glance at their new occupants, who were crammed so 
tightly together that a cat or a dog could hardly have found 
room among them ; nor would a cat which preserved a re-mnant 
of self-respect have made the attempt. These pilgrims were, 
most of them, beggars, and apparently had not been washed 
since the battle of Navarino, if indeed they had ever been 
washed in their lives. There could be little doubt that they 
were covered with vermin of every sort; and in the east there 
are nine different kinds of bugs alone. A brief consultation 
was quite sufficient to determine us; and we desired the 
guardians to place us where they pleased, provided they re- 
moved us from the present company. We were marshaled 
accordingly to our upper chamber. Having taken possession 
of it, and deposited ouj luggage on the floor, we sallied forth 



224 PICTURESQUE SKETCHES 

again to an open court^ where we passed the day meditating on 
the interesting chances which befall travelers^ and the know- 
ledge of the world which they are sure to pick up on their way. 

Late in the evening it grew cold^ and I was obliged to take 
refuge within the walls of our dungeon. I found my com- 
panions already there, squatting tailor-wise, each man upon 
that carpet with which the eastern traveler is generally pro- 
vided. All were talking at once, and each in a different lan- 
guage, laughing and telling stories, until my brain went round 
like the brain of a dancing dervis. As it grew later, and the 
cold increased, each of them pulled up the four corners of his 
carpet and knotted them over his shoulders, nothing remaining 
outside the pyramid thus formed except his head and red night- 
cap. A strange spectacle they presented, squatting there like 
so many wretches whom an evil genius of Africa had immersed 
in leathern bottles and left for a season. Every moment their 
volubility seemed to wax fiercer, and I had given over all hopes 
of sleep, feeling indeed as much stunned as if I had been 
hanged by the heels from the topmost story of the tower of 
Babel, when all at once there came a pause ; the imprisoned 
spirits wavered in their circle, lay down, or rather tumbled 
over, with one accord, and in another moment were snoring. 
There was but one exception, an American merchant, who 
continued for more than two hours to recount a series of stories 
for his own amusement, accompanying them with furious gesti- 
culations. He also, however, at last ceased ; brought to a stand 
still in a moment, like a child's top when it has hit against the 
wall — upset and joined the rest of the sleepers. 

The next day was fortunately the last of our quarantine, and 
thenceforward we were to enjoy the freedom of the island. 
Great was our alarm, however, on descending into the court, 
lest any of the more recently arrived travelers should touch us, 
as such an accident (a thing of frequent occurrence) would have 



OF GREECE AND TURKEY. 225 

consigned us to another imprisonment of fourteen days. So 
nervous did this prospect make me, that long after I was set 
free, I could not help, while walking about Syra, instinctively 
holding forth my stick between me and any one who approached 
very near me. I had still to wait five days for the arrival of 
another packet. With the assistance of the English consul I 
succeeded in making out the secretary of the French packet 
ofiice, and insisted on receiving a clearer explanation than I 
had yet been favored with^ of the singular fact that although 
I had taken my place in a steamer bound for Constantinople, 
that vessel had notwithstanding proceeded to Alexandria in- 
stead, dropping me at Syra. Mr. Secretary, in reply, com- 
menced a long harangue, dividing the subject into dificrent 
heads, each of which he counted on his fingers as he proceeded. 
Three of these heads he had already disposed of, when, per- 
ceiving that he had ten fingers at his command, and that the 
question would therefore necessarily divide itself into ten heads, 
I interposed, stating that he had convinced me already, and 
that I would give him no further trouble, except to refund the 
money I had paid. This demand astonished him very much, 
shocked him not a little, and would have pained him yet more 
had he not obligingly attributed it to my ignorance of the 
world and of business. Here, however, I was resolute ; and 
after a tremendous discussion, during which he snatched off 
his spectacles and put them on again more than a dozen times, 
I confuted him in argument, and he repaid me my money, with 
the exception of the fare as far as Syra, assuring me, however, 
to the last, that he did so out of politeness, not out of justice, 
'^casualties being," as he remarked, "part of the order of 
nature." 

/"At Syra I found a tolerably good inn — good enough at least 
it proved for me, inasmuch as, spending the whole day in the 
open air, I was but little dependent for comfort on its accom- 



226 PICTURESQUE SKETCHES 

modations. From morning till night I wandered about its 
steep and rocky hills ; the whole island, I think^ not contain- 
ing a single plain, or even level road. Syra is too bleak and 
barren to be beautiful, nor is its scale sufficient to impart to 
its scenery a character of grandeur ; it is, however, in a high 
degree, picturesque. It consists of innumerable rough, lofty, 
and craggy ridges, sprinkled at wide intervals with a few trees, 
chiefly ilex and olive, and divided from each other by streams 
that breathe verdure over the base of the narrow glens through 
which they glide, and refresh the gardens with which, as well 
as with wooden cottages, their banks are bordered. Between 
these tawny ridges open out in all directions magnificent sea- 
views, comprehending, each of them, a cluster of the Egean 
isles, which lie, like so many transformed sea-nymphs, basking 
in the brightest of all suns, and bathing in the bluest of all 
waters. Among these islands are Delos, Paros, Antiparos, 
and the Bacchic Naxos. Delightful it would have been to 
have explored them, had that been possible ', nor was it possi- 
ble without deep interest to gaze on them from afar — to see 
the sun ascending over the island that gave Latona rest, and 
to watch the remote sea around Naxos tinged with the grape- 
like purple of evening. From rock to rock I climbed, seeking 
ever for a better point of view from which to contemplate ob- 
jects, the mere names of which are sufficient to call up fair 
images before the eyes. Keeping ever on the heights, I sel- 
dom passed near a human being, though I sometimes observed 
the islanders gazing from the glen below at the unwonted 
stranger. I often lost my way, and generally returned late, 
to the discontent of the cook, a little bright-eyed man with a 
paper cap on his head, an enthusiast about his art, who insisted 
on attending me at dinner, and pointing out in what point of 
view each dish was to be considered, although I did not under- 
stand a syllable he said, and answered him, perhaps too bricfiy, 



m^.^ 



OP GREECE AND TURKEY. 227 

English. vThe five days of expectation rolled pleasantly 
away ; and though I did not visit Syra by my own good will, 
yet I left it with what a traveler calls regret — not, I fear, a 
very deep sentiment/ 

f From Syra to Smyrna is not a very considerable distance, 
and yet we contrived to meet two accidents on our way thither, 
the former of which turned out more formidable to others than 
to ourselves. It was late in the evening when we approached 
the coast of Asia, and light there was little or none.] Most of 
those who had been pacing the deck all day had retired to rest 
— the young ladies to dream of the Bazaar at Constantinople, 
and the men, let us hope, of those whose unsteady steps they 
had lately been staying. The sea was quite still, and we 
rushed through it with a speed which, on a dark night, some- 
times makes one think how far from desirable it would be to 
encounter another vessel advancing with the same velocity, but 
in an opposite direction. The sea, however, is a wide road, on 
which there is room enough for two vessels to pass each other ; 
and that would be a strange coincidence which brought them 
to the same spot at the same moment. Such were my thoughts, 
as, lying on the deck, I turned on my side to fall asleep once 
more ; when suddenly I heard a shout from the sailors in the 
fore part of the vessel. In a moment I was among them ; but 
before I had time to see anything I heard a loud crash, fol- 
lowed by a louder cry ; and saw, in a moment more, the mast 
and white sails of a vessel which we had run over, clinging — a 
lamentable spectacle — to our bows and rigging. In a few 
minutes we had lowered a couple of boats, in the hope of 
picking up the wrecked crew. All around us the sea was 
covered with the stores the luckless vessel had carried, con- 
sisting chiefly of lemons and oranges, as well as oars and spars. 
The next ten minutes were a time of terrible suspense ; but 
at the end of it our boats returned with three Greek sailors, 



228 PICTURESQUE SKETCHES 

all wliom they were able to find. Whether the whole of the 
crew had been saved, or which proportion might have been 
lost, we knew not ; and we clustered, with many questions and 
infinite confusion, around the three G-reek sailors, who, having 
given themselves a good shake, each, like a water-dog, stood 
among us the only unmoved people in the group. In reply to 
our questions, the sole answer we received consisted of the 
words, fpccf av9po7ts6, the penultimate syllable of the latter 
word being pronounced short ; while, in illustration of their 
meaning, each of our informants held up three fingers of his 
right hand. From this answer we rightly inferred that their 
crew had consisted of but three men, all of whom had provi- 
dentially been saved. 

On further inquiry, it turned out that the unfortunate vessel 
we had run over was a trading boat, bound from Smyrna to 
some other city on the coast of Asia Minor, with a cargo of 
figs, lemons, groceries, and spices. The wind having died 
away, the sailors had gone to sleep, and were awaked, for the 
first time, by finding themselves in the water. They imme- 
diately struck out, and swam round and round like so many 
frogs, taking care not to separate from each other, and conclud- 
ing that whoever had upset their boat would, as a matter of 
course, return to pick them up. Not the least disconcerted did 
they seem by the accident; and, apparently, they had seen enough 
of the world to know, like my friend the secretary of the steam- 
boat office, "that casualties are part of the order of nature.'^ 
Considering the degree of nervous agitation and distress which 
we, who belong to the more "civilized" part of the world, ex- 
perience, on very slight occasions, such as missing a railway 
train, their entire self-possession and almost entire iudiflference 
were worthy of notice. They were going to lie down on the 
deck again, and compose themselves to sleep, when the captain 
insisted on their changing their clothes, lending them three 



OF GREECE AND TURKEY. 229 

clotli suits of his own, while theirs were placed near the fire to 
dry. This arrangement effected, our unexpected visitors went 
to bed, and we followed their example, though, as accidents are 
said never to come alone, I had a strong impression that our 
slumbers would not remain unbroken. 

And even so it happened. After a few hours' sleep I was 
awaked by a loud commotion on deck; men rushing in every 
direction, and clamoring after a fashion which probably would 
not be tolerated on board an English man-of-war during a 
wreck. It was that cold dreary hour of gray dawn which pre- 
cedes sunrise ; but there was light enough for me to see that, 
just at the entrance of the Bay of Smyrna, we had got too near 
the shore, and that, although there were no rocks near us, there 
were abundance of shoals, from which it is not easy to extricate 
a ship that has run aground. We saved ourselves from that 
misfortune by flinging out an anchor just in time; but when, 
on getting our vessel round, we endeavored to raise that anchor, 
we found that this was no easy matter. An English ship, 
which lay rocking in the shadow hard by, sent off a boat to 
our assistance : the joint exertions, however, of our own crew 
and of, our friends proved ineffectual; and after losing an hour 
we were obliged to proceed upon our way, leaving our new 
allies to continue their efforts unaided. 

Soon after sunrise our whole ship's crew had appeared on 
deck, and among them the three G-reeks, whose acquaintance 
we had so unceremoniously made during the night. They had 
discovered on board a passenger who was able to speak both 
Greek and French, and with his aid, as an interpreter, they 
came to the captain and demanded that he should reimburse 
them for the property they had lost. This, at first, he stoutly 
refused to do, asserting that the fault had been entirely on their 
gide ; that they had no right to have . gone to sleep on the 
water; that lying as they did, right in his way, they might have 
20 



280 PICTURESQUE SKETCHES 

done him tlie most serious damage, and would have done so, 
but for the accident of their boat being so much smaller than 
his ; and that, even as matters had turned out, they had occa- 
sioned him much delay, trouble, and agitation. To this 
harangue the Greeks listened with immovable tranquillity, and 
with the countenances of men who had heard just what they 
expected to hear : then brightening up with a sudden vivacity, 
they inquired of him, not even waiting for an interpretation of 
his speech, whether a steamboat was not bound to carry a lan- 
tern on her mast. This question, of course, he could not an- 
swer otherwise than in the affirmative, and, accordingly, he 
asserted that he had carried one. The Greeks had, however, 
shortly after coming on board, heard an officer reproving a 
sailor for having neglected to light the lantern, and had guessed 
his meaning by his gesticulations. Thus far they were able to 
make their course good, and the captain was obliged to lower 
his tone and to expostulate with them on their ingratitude to a 
man who had saved their lives, affirming that he had spent his 
twenty years chiefly in endeavoring to befriend the Greeks, and 
had met nothing but ingratitude in return. Our friends, how- 
ever, insisted on their rights, and the captain, compelled to 
negotiate, told them that it would be a great scandal if friends 
were to quarrel about a trifle — -that when he landed at Smyrna 
he would send for the French consul, refer the matter to him, 
and abide by his decision. 

The Greeks consulted for a few moments on the subject in 
their own language, laughed, and said they would allow him to 
settle the matter in whatever way he thought just. Their ac- 
quiescence surprised me, as I expected little from the proposed 
arbitration. My suspicions were confirmed when I heard one 
officer say to another, "Just as if our consul would decide 
against his nation ;'^ to which the other replied, " Beside, the- 
captain will not give him the trouble of coming," " What," 



OF GREECE AND TURKEY. 231 

said I to myself, " can a Greek be outwitted by a Frenchman V 
It was not till our departure from Smyrna that I was unde- 
ceived. Our astute captain had informed his shipwrecked 
guests that he would not have time to see the consul till an 
hour before getting under way in the afternoon. They agreed, 
after a little murmuring, to return at a specified time, and 
landed with the rest of us, still wearing the captain's clothes, 
in order, as they stated, to look out for another boat. When 
the hour for our departure came, however, our friends were no- 
where to be found ; and all ^arch for them proved as vain as 
a search for the old moons or the snows of last year would have 
been. G-reat was the horror &f our captain as tho truth dawned 
upon him; great his indignation whes ther-e was no longer 
room for do^bt. Furiously did he pace up and down the deck; 
many a wrathful glance did he cast at the ^oi^, before he ad- 
mitted that the game was up, and exclaimed " in fine they have 
deceived me ! wretches.^ ingrates ! Three suits of clothes ! my 
best, or among my best — worth their palfcry^cargo thrice told— 
lemons, indeed 1 figs! impostors as they are; without doubt 
they laugh at nsl ah, G-reeks, Greeks!'^ K'otwithstanding, 
neither had the French consul ever set kig- foot on deck. 
Truly it was diamond cut diamond between them ; but ^' thrice 
blest Hermes'' smiled upon his sobs, and glanced obliquely on 
the stranger. 

rThe Bay of Smyrna is eminently noble in character, superior, 
think to any of the Italian bays, though hardly equaling in 
variety and loveliness several &f the Grecian. In the Bay of 
Smyrna and in its neighborhood I was much gtruek hy the deep 
green of the mountains, which contrasts strongly with the la- 
vender-color, predominant in Attica. The scenery around 
Smyrna is on a broader and grander scale than that which I 
had lately seen, its hills being wider though not higher, while 
the ample valleys between them are characterized at once by 



232 PICTURESQUE SKETCHES 

vastness and luxuriance. Beyond tlie city, in a direction op- 
posite to that in which the sea lies, rises a noble amphitheatre 
of broad, green hills, on which the people point out a spot 
which, as they affirm, was the site of a church built by St. John, 
and another, asserted to be the place of St. Polycarp's martyr- 
dom. Such lore is, of course, somewhat apocryphal; but in 
that region, where once flourished one of the Seven Churches of 
Asia, one is more disposed to accept such legends on insufficient 
evidence, than to scrutinize them closely. I visited a venera- 
ble castle built by the Grenoese, which crowns the summit of 
one of the highest hills, and commands such a view of sea 
and mountain as few regions of the world display. Standing 
on that elevated spot, I could not determine which was to be 
preferred, the inland prospect with its rich, wide valleys, its 
winding rivers, its broad plane trees, and dusky cypress-groves, 
or the bay with its green and broad-based mountains, its beam- 
ing sea, and its multitudinous shipping. To that bay an addi- 
tional interest was given by the presence of the English and 
French fleets which lay in a crescent on its ample plain, heaving 
slowly in the sunshine though at anchor, and straining their 
cables, a suggestive image of restrained yet expectant ambition. 
The picturesque efl'ect of Smyrna is much enhanced by its 
numerous and magnificent burial places, which are sufficient 
in themselves to convince a reflective mind that the East by no 
means labors under that comparative barbarism which the self- 
sufficiency of the West has long attributed to it. Where the 
dead are remembered, there the heart and the moral sense are 
alive; nor can man there be subjected to that true barbarism 
•which, however it may be tricked out and made specious, con- 
sists in nothing more than in a weak dependence on the senses 
and the present hour, and an alienation from all sad and solemn 
thoughts. The efiect of those vast black forests is inexpressi- 
bly grand, and the more so because they commonly range over 



OF GREECE AND TURKEY. 233 

elevated ground, and occupy a large proportion of the land- 
scape. Over every grave a cypress is planted, standing, there- 
fore, within about six feet of each other, each gathering an 
added darkness from its neighbor's shadow, they cloud the earth 
with such a weight of shade, and seem to turn night into day. 
In the cities of the dead, which they consecrate, nature herself 
is obliged to wear mourning. 

The streets of Smyrna are narrow, dirty, and dark; the ba- 
zaar, on the other hand, is as brilliant and as fascinating as a 
cavern of jewels described in a fairytale. It consists of a laby- 
rinth of alleys, roofed with planks which nearly join each other, 
but which are yet sufficiently far apart to let in streaks of sun- 
shine that bar the pavement as with golden ingots, and shoot a 
radiance into the duskiest recesses of the gorgeous shops at 
each side. The dark magnificence of these shops imparts to 
the bazaar that peculiar richness which characterizes Eastern 
pageantry. The goods of each, instead of being locked up in 
presses, or ranged along the retiring depth of the building, are 
all brought to the front, and exhibited there in the most taste- 
ful combination. At one time you walk for a hundred yards 
through a space glowing like an autumnal orchard from the 
multitude of crimson and orange slippers suspended at each 
side, numerous enough, one would have said, to have shod the 
army of Xerxes. At another you pass through alleys lined 
with Cashmere shawls and Persian carpets, and sumptuous as 
an Oriental saloon. A little farther on you come to a region 
glittering with jewelry, perfumery, and sweetmeats. The tra- 
veler, however, who allows his eye to be too much entranced 
by these wonders, is likely to be rudely awakened, and may 
think himself well oiF if he escapes being knocked down by a 
train of camels, pacing forward, softly and deliberately, one by 
one, with shaggy necks and level heads, like beasts in a state 
of somnambulism. The burthens which they carry are fre- 

20* 



284 PICTURESQUE SKETCHES 

quently wide enough to sweep the booths at each side; so that 
the best chance of not being thrown down^ if one cannot get 
into a shopj would seem at first to consist in stooping low 
enough to let those burthens pass over one's head. 

The mosques of Smyrna must much disappoint anyone who 
has formed high expectations of them. I hardly know any 
religious buildings the architecture of which appears more en- 
tirely uninspired. The traveler finds no difficulty in gaining 
admittance on complying with the simple condition of taking 
off his shoeS;, a mark of respect which will seem to him very 
superfluous as soon as he has entered. The interior is a vast 
saloon, for the most part square, and always a rectangle, the roof 
of which is commonly supported on large and shapeless pillars. 
Buildings more entirely destitute, not only of architectural 
symbolism, but of expression, it would be difficulty to imagine : 
and bare as they are they make that bareness yet more offensive 
from the paltry ornaments with which they endeavor to enliven 
it, those ornaments consisting chiefly in countless little lamps 
and ostrich eggs suspended from the ceiling. Everything, 
however, no matter how unmeaning, has yet something cha- 
racteristic about it; and the baldness of these mosques corre- 
sponds aptly enough with the flat and dreary rationalism of a 
religion which differs but little from the Unitarianism of the 
West (renouncing as it does all mysterious dogmatic faith, all 
sacramental worship, and all sacerdotal ministrations), except in 
the strictness with which it enforces cleanliness, the zeal with 
which it once inspired the loyal servants of its prophet, and its 
retention of that polygancy so long tolerated in the East. 

Further accident we encountered none on our way to the 
^^ Golden Horn.^' On reaching the mouth of the bay we found 
that the crew of the English vessel had toiled the greater part 
of the day to recover our lost anchor, and that their persever- 
ance had not been unavailing. Poor fellows ! they expected a 



OF GREECE AND TURKEY. 235 

reward for their pains which they were not destined to receive. 
Certainly they deserved something "to drink/^ as they would 
have called it : but our captain conceived that the loss of three 
suits of clothes was sufficient for one day. Perhaps he may 
have remembered them in his will, or sent them from Con- 
stantinople a money order on our three run-away Creeks : 
but it is certain that he took their day^s labor on that 
occasion as a disinterested labor of love, and that consequently 
we departed amid very grim looks and a scornful silence 
instead of hearty cheers. We left behind the island of 
Scioj and ere long that of Mitylene was on our left hand. On 
pur right lay that shore which the blind minstrel who sings for 
all time had doubtless often paced, catching perhaps an inspi- 
ration from the deep-woven melodies of the sea, and on which 
Priam had once reigned among the towers, and palaces, and 
god-built walls of "windy Ilium.'' Nothing remains to mark 
the spot which afforded a subject to what may perhaps be 
called, using the term in its highest sense, the one epic poem 
of the world. Simois and Scamander are but feeble streams, 
winding through the wide meadowy plain which drops with a 
soft descent from its mountain boundary to the waves of the 
sea. Were they ever more, or was it only to the magnifying 
influences of the imagination that we owe the wonders of that 
well-fought field? Let us beware how we doubt that those 
narrow rivulets were once abounding rivers, lest, taken posses- 
sion of by the long-fingered and short-sighted demon of skepti- 
cism, we should end by doubting whether the elders of Troy 
rose up from their seats when the divine beauty of Helen drew 
nigh, and adopt an opinion with respect to the heroes who fought 
around Troy as disparaging as that so frequently maintained by 
old Nestor. 

Before many hours we had sailed past the island of Tenedos, 
and left on the western horizon, the blue and misty shores 



236 PICTURESQUE SKETCHES 

of Lemnos, where Yulcan had, in the Hellenic legend, met 
with what my friend, who commented on the Leucadian pro- 
montory and Sappho's leap, would have called ^' a distressing 
accident/' Ere long we were steering into the Dardanelles, 
and sailing by the shores which the memory of Hero has con- 
secrated. That torch which the priestess of Venus held out 
from the tower of Sestos, if remorselessly extinguished as often 
as she re-lighted it — - 

" On that night of stormy water, 
When Love who sent forgot to save 
The young, the beautiful, the brave, 
The lonely hope of Sestos' daughter — " 

has been lighted again by successive poets, and tended with a 
more than common fidelity during the ages which have rolled 
away since her brief sorrow. After being transmitted from the 
hands of Virgil and Ovid to those of our Marlow and Chap- 
man, it has been once more, in our own days, lifted up and 
waved around by those of Leigh Hunt and Thomas Hood. In 
most of the legends which have descended to us from antiquity, 
there is a certain indescribable charm which prevents them from 
ever growing old. It would not be easy to ascertain in what 
that charm consists; but when we remember that those legends 
only have reached us which have proved able to pass through 
the filter of time, there is the less reason to be surprised at the 
fact, that a merit thus severely tested should appeal so strongly 
to our sympathies. 

The Sea of Marmora received us ere long, and it was 
then that we felt that we were within the precincts of the 
capital of the Eastern empire. We had on board a goodly 
array of Orientals from all parts of the east, who were far too 
dignified to take any interest in the objects we passed by. One 
of these was an interesting being, a Turkish woman unprotected, 



OF GREECE AND TURKEY. 287 

and probably nearly as much troubled at finding herself thus 
separated from her wonted seclusion^ and divulged to the world, 
as if she had been a nun. Two children were her sole com- 
panions; and in looking after her charge, she did not always 
find it easy to keep the veil muffled with its customary close- 
ness about her pale, smooth, and beautifully-shaped face. Her 
dark and slow eyes stared alarmed disapprobation at the wonders 
of the deep; while those of her children, equally dark, and 
almost equally languid, rested quiescent upon whatever trifle 
chanced to be near them. Not a word did she speak of any 
European language; but she consoled herself by talking inces- 
santly to her infant, who was so young that, if he understood 
her better than the rest of the ship's company, he was yet 
equally unable to make any very clear reply. Not far from her 
sat two little Grreek girls, apparently about ten or eleven years 
old. After casting many a glance towards her, they rose at 
last, with a common impulse, went to her, and notwithstandiDg 
their ignorance of her language, and their detestation of her 
race and religion, insisted upon taking possession of her eldest 
child, whom they carried about, without opposition on his part, 
for the rest of the voyage. The poor mother, "silent as a 
woman fearing blame," resisted stoutly at first, and looked after 
them uneasily for a long time afterwards; but apparently recon- 
ciled herself to the abduction at last, perceiving perhaps that 
her child was in safe hands, and remembering, at all events, 
that nothing could happen to him which had not been decreed 
from the hour of his birth, nay, from the creation of the world 
— two important epochs, no doubt, in her chronology. As for 
the G-reek girls, wherever one went the other went, and what- 
ever one looked at the other looked at also; so that one might 
have fancied they had but one soul between them, if it had not 
been for the art with which they alternately supplanted each 



238 PICTURESQUE SKETCHES 

other in the possession of their captive, whom they carried 
about with them, up stairs and down stairs, in and out, and all 
over the ship. Wherever they went, the young Turk went also. 
They were as inseparably connected as a divinity and his attri- 
bute in a mythological print. 



OF GREECE AND TURKEY. 239 



CHAPTER XVII. 

CONSTANTINOPLE. 

First appearance of the city as seen from the water — Rich intermingling 
of architectural and natural beauty — Brilliant coloring of the scene — ■ 
Contrast between Constantinople and Venice — Also between Con- 
stantinople and the ancient cities of Greece — Vast size of Constanti- 
nople and its suburbs — A traveler's disappointment on landing at 
Constantinople — Interior of Constantinople — Its narrow streets — The 
character of nations illustrated by the aspect of their capitals — Pro- 
minent characteristics of Constantinople — Mosques — Baths — Tombs — 
Tomb of the Sultan Solyman. 

I HAD been occupied for some time in the calbin^ when a 
fellow-traveler entered and announced that we were sailing 
past Constantinople. I hastened at once to the deck^ and 
could hardly at first determine whether what I beheld were 
indeed a city, or a vision of the imagination. The view of 
Constantinople from the sea is the most splendid of all the 
pageants presented to human eye by the metropolitan cities of 
the earth. The vulgar detail of street and alley is hidden 
from sight, and you are greeted, instead^ by an innumerable 
company of mosques, minarets, palaces, dome-surmounted 
baths, and royal tombs, the snowy brilliancy or splendid color- 
ing of which is, in some degree, mitigated by the garden trees 
that cluster around them, and the cypress forests that skirt the 
hills, and, here and there, descend into the city. That city is 
built upon a series of hills ; and so intensely is a fair prospect 
prized by a Turk, that, on every commanding spot^ the house 



240 PICTURESQUE SKETCHES 

of some rich man is placed, with its gilded lattices gleaming 
through a leafy screen. So immense are the gardens, that the 
effect is less that of trees scattered amid a city, than of a city 
built in a forest but partially cleared. This green veil, how- 
ever, softens rather than obscures the glorious apparition that 
lurks behind, the vast and countless white domes shining 
broadly and placidly through it, while the gilded tops of the 
minarets glitter on high like the flames that hover above the 
reed-like tapers in Italian cathedrals. Multitudes of houses in 
Constantinople are painted green, red, or blue, which circum- 
stance added to the gorgeousness of the spectacle which met 
my eye, as well as the fact that spring had already breathed 
upon the plane-trees and the almonds, which were putting forth 
abundantly their fresh green leaves, and their blossoms rose- 
colored and white. 

It is, however, the sea which gives its peculiar character to 
Constantinople as to Venice. In Venice the sea is crowned by 
the sea-born city, and spreads all around it, as around an island 
thick-set with palaces and towers. In Constantinople the 
effect is the opposite. At the point whence Stamboul (the 
ancient Byzantium), Pera, and Scutari diverge, the sea of 
Marmora, the Bosphorus, and the wide and winding harbor of 
the " Grolden Horn'^ meet, forming, as it were a great lake, 
round which, as round a central plain, the three-fold city ex- 
tends, rising, stage above stage, along the slopes of the hills. 
The effect of this unrivaled position is that nearly every build- 
ing of importance is brought at once before the eye, minaret 
and dome lifting themselves up one above another. In this 
respect the contrast is most remarkable between Constantinople 
and those capitals of the north in which you never see the city 
itself, but only the street or the square you stand in at the 
moment, in which public buildings lose almost all their effect 



OF GREECE AND TURKEY. 241 

from not grouping together, and in wliicli you have no extended 
effects of color, or of light and shade. 

Equally opposed in character is Constantinople to the 
ancient capitals of Grreece, each of which, with the exception of 
Delphi and a few more unwarlike cities, was built around some 
steep and rocky Acropolis from which its citadel looked proudly 
down. Constantinople has no such Acropolitan centre. If a 
centre for it were sought, it might, perhaps, best be found in a 
spot which adds much to the picturesque effect of the scene, 
though nothing to its dignity — the " Prince's Island,'^ a rock 
nearly at the entrance of the Bosphorus, just large enough to 
sustain a mosque, the dome of which peers out from among its 
cypresses. Beside that island old Dandalo moored his galleys 
at the capture of Constantinople by the Franks, July 18, 1203. 
The dark stream of the Bosphorus rushes past its terraced 
crags, glad to escape the Scythian blasts it has left behind, and 
mingles the waters of the Black Sea with the blue and lumi- 
nous expanse of the Sea of Marmora. Far, however, from 
looking down on the city from this spot, you look up in all di- 
rections on its glittering lines as they rise like an amphitheatre 
along the hills which gird the deep. 

To appreciate the extent of Constantinople, it is necessary to 
bear in mind that for all purposes of picturesque effect, the 
various suburban towns which are united with it, though called 
by different names, yet constitute but a single city. For a 
length of eight miles that city rises stage above stage from the 
Sea of Marmora toward the east, before it reaches the ^'- Grolden 
Horn," which winds through its heart for seven miles more, 
like a wide river, the hills at both sides being crowned with 
architectural monuments, insterspersed with gardens. Nearly 
at the mouth of the " Golden Horn" is the entrance to the 
Bosphorus. It is here that the three cities meet. Stamboul, 
to the west, projects into the Sea of Marmora, a walled and 
21 



242 PICTURESQUE SKETCHES 

secluded promontory covered with the domes, and shaded with 
the cypress alleys of the Seraglio, just beyond which rise the 
roofs of St. Sophia. At the opposite, that is the eastern, side 
of the " Golden Horn,'^ is situated Pera, the district in which 
the Christians reside ; while at the southern side of the Bos- 
phorus Scutari juts out, richly decked with mosque and minaret, 
from the sea at its base, to the cypress cemetery with which its 
upper slopes are darkened. Nor is this all. At each side of 
the Bosphorus, all the way to the Black Sea, it may be said 
that one continuous city extends, composed of villages, which 
in their gradual growth have nearly met, spreading high upon 
the hills in many places, and following the windings of the 
glens until they are lost among the forests and thickets of the 
inland country. From the Black Sea in fact to the Sea of 
Marmora, as well as far along its shores, and along the " Golden 
Horn," Constantinople may be said to extend, constituting al- 
together a city, the circuit of which (if a wall were built round 
it) would not be less than sixty miles ; and yet every important 
building in which is seen from the water ! There are five cities 
in Europe of pre-eminent beauty, regarded as architectural 
scenes in combination with picturesque natural effects — Con- 
stantinople, Naples, Venice, Genoa, and Edinburgh. Of these 
there is none that approaches Constantinople in the vastness 
and wonderfulness of its aspect when contemplated from the 
sea..^ 

A considerable delay ensued after we had cast anchor before 
we were allowed to land, but if it had lasted twice as long I 
should not have been tired of gazing at the prospects around 
me on every side. At last, however, we were allowed to de- 
scend into one of the numerous little caiques that came flocking 
merrily around us, and we rowed to land in the midst of count- 
less sea-birds, which flew past us, only one degree lighter and 
swifter than our boat. The moment which we had touched the 



OF GREECE AND TURKEY. 243 

shore, a Greek, addressing me in Italian, informed me that he 
was willing to place his services at my disposal as cicerone, 
and that he would conduct me without delay to an excellent 
house, where I should find everything that a traveler can desire. 
Accordingly I surrendered myself and my luggage to his dis- 
cretion, and bade him lead the way. For a considerable time 
I followed him up a steep and windjng ascent, then at last 
stopped to rub my eyes and ask "what is become of the mag- 
nificent city on which I gazed but now V The hero of an 
eastern tale suddenly deserted by the genius or fairy who has 
built up his enchanted palace, and on whose departure it melts 
again into the air, does not gaze around him with more dismay 
than the traveler who exchanges, for the first time, the view of 
Constantinople from the sea for the spectacle which meets his 
eye as he wanders through it. The streets are narrow, hilly, 
and dirty, besides being so rough and ill-paved that it is with 
difficulty that one walks along them. The houses are com- 
monly small, and frequently, at once tawdry and half ruinous, 
while if you pass by the residences of the rich, you probably 
see no more of them than the garden wall. In these respects 
the streets of Constantinople bear, we may suppose, no small 
resemblance to the aspect presented by many an European city 
some centuries ago, when but little regard was paid to cleanli- 
ness, the comforts of the poor, or the security of those who had 
to walk on foot. Before long I found myself established in a 
sort of lodging-house rather than hotel, kept by an Italian, and 
took possession of an airy and comfortable room, though one 
which commanded, unfortunately, no view of the sea. 

Accompanied by my Greek cicerone, I sallied forth without 
much loss of time, eager to enjoy a nearer view of a city the 
first sight of which had been so beautiful. He suggested that 
we should inspect the antiquities, a proposal which, however, I 
begged to decline for the present. There can hardly be a 



244 PICTURESQUE SKETCHES 

greater mistake than that of beginning one's acquaintance with 
a great city by an examination of its minuter details. This 
mode of proceeding, though a very common one, is surely as 
great a blunder as that committed by readers who allow their 
attention to be distracted by verbal criticism during their first 
perusal of a poem. The original impression which we receive 
of anything great, whether in nature or in art, is of the utmost 
importance, and is absolutely lost if we do not endeavor to take 
in, as a whole, the object which we can afterwards examine with 
reference to its several parts. The consequence of reversing the 
order of this process is, that we insensibly grow accustomed to 
the objects before the eye without having ever seen them col- 
lectively ; and that, by the time we have mastered their details, 
that freshness of impression is worn out in the absence of which 
the characteristic idea of the whole does not dawn upon us. 
There is always time enough for scrutinizing details ; but the 
opportunity of taking in a general impression once forfeited, is 
not to be recovered or compensated. Accordingly, I told my 
guide, very much to his apparent surprise, that I had not come 
to Constantinople for the sake of seeing anything in particular, 
and that I only wanted him to take me an agreeable ride 
through the city. Eccentricities pass for nothing on the con- 
tinent if they come from an Englishman. If costly as well as 
unreasonable in their character, they find their place, of course, 
in the bill ; if not, they hardly excite a remark, the general 
opinion, in many places, being that all Englishmen are more or 
less mad, although they are also particularly respectable, honor- 
able, disagreeable persons who not only retain the power of 
managing their afiairs, but have also no small faculty of mak- 
ing their way in the world — a faculty quickened by their being 
commonly too stupid to see difiiculties, and often too ignorant 
to know when they are defeated. My cicerone mounted his 
horse, telling me that we should keep a good deal on the heights. 



OF GREECE AND TURKEY. 245 

wtere the air is freshest^ and that he wag quite of my opinion 
with respect to antiquities and curiosities of all sorts. 

The inconvenience of dirty, rough, and hilly streets is much 
less to a horseman than to one who trudges anxiously on, pick- 
ing his steps as he best may ; and the disappointment I had 
felt on first landing wore off by degrees. Sometimes from the 
summits of the citied hills, and sometimes looking between them, 
we commanded noble views of the sea, viewed over a confused 
but glorious array of towers, domes, and gardens ; and whatever 
was mean in the separate objects, was lost in the grandeur of 
the whole. The houses, small and inconvenient as many of 
them are, possess, notwithstanding, many picturesque features, 
especially a broad, projecting roof, which produces a striking 
contrast of light and shade. The most insignificant of them 
have at least escaped that look of neat and pert vulgarity which 
characterizes most of our snug suburban buildings in England. 
They are without pretension, and seem sufficient to afford shel- 
ter during a shower, and during the night to people who, severe 
as is often the winter, might live during many months of 
the year in the open air. The greater number of them are 
built of wood ; and during a long succession of years it was ac- 
counted a sort of impiety to use stone in constructing a private 
house, so solid a material being thought appropriate only for 
religious edifices. One effect of the modest scale of the ordinary 
dwelling-houses is that, at Constantinople, the public buildings 
show to greater proportionate advantage than in any other Eu- 
ropean capital, lifting up their heads over multitudes of pictu- 
resque roofs huddled together in strange combinations. 

The houses of the rich at Constantinople are sumptuous in 
their internal arrangements ; but externally they affect nothing 
either of grandeur or of permanence. Half screened by their 
lofty garden walls and by the trees that embower them, they 
might almost escape attention ; and no doubt to escape attention 

21* 



246 PICTURESQUE SKETCHES 

is no small recommendation in a country where to exhibit 
wealth is to tempt rapacity. The external aspect of Constanti- 
nople thus is a necessary result of its social character^ and of 
the Ottoman institutions. The character of every nation, indeed; 
is singularly illustrated by the outward appearance of its 
metropolis, the most marked features of which constitute, as it 
were, so many phrenological developments, not difficult of 
interpretation if scanned by an observant eye. What are the 
most marked characteristics of Rome ? Churches, Obelisks, 
Gralleries of Art, and (among ruins) the Coliseum, the Arches 
of Triumph, and the pillars on which once stood the imperial 
statues, now supplanted by those of the Apostles. In these 
buildings the triple character of the papal metropolis, sacerdotal, 
artistic, and imperial, stands forth exhibited in outward types ; 
and in observing the monuments of Rome you become insensi- 
bly initiated into its history, and the structure of its society. 
In the other cities of Italy the palaces of the nobility, sometimes 
vast and gloomy, sometimes enriched with all the adornments 
of art, but almost invariably built of solid marble, remind you 
of thaib great hereditary aristocracy which inherited rule, or of 
those great merchant princes, the founders of families which 
during centuries contended for sway. In Paris neither the 
palaces of the once-worshiped monarchy, nor the military 
hospitals and trophies of conquest which embody the martial 
spirit of a nation devoted to fame, can prevent the eye of the 
stranger, or of the native, from wandering to those glittering 
temples of gayety and sensual pleasure, the innumerable and 
magnificent cafes and restaurants, with their marble pillars, their 
mirrored walls, and their vaulted roofs of blue and gold. 
London, in its wilderness of brick, is a world rather than a city. 
A few considerable and solid buildings, lost, however, in the 
plebeian mass, represent scientific institutions, flourishing trades, 
or political associations; and two edifices rising high above the 



OF GREECE AND TURKEY. 247 

rest, St. Paul's and the Parliament House, impersonate Church 
and State. But the city at large, with its convenient straight 
streets, and houses of equal height, and one monotonous color, 
its smoky atmosphere, its plain proprieties, its parks and squares, 
and neat churches, exhibits the outward features of a nation 
devoted to commerce, to freedom, to the activities of life, to 
peaceful progress, to modern traditions as the guard of respect- 
ability, and to ancient usages, so far as these are able, without 
limiting private liberty, to impart to quiet respectability a 
harmless and interesting tinge of the venerable. 

The outward aspect of Constantinople is equally true to its 
character and history. Where no hereditary greatness was 
suffered to exist, except in the royal line, no architectural 
monuments of great families remain. No one has built for 
posterity, because no one could trust to the future. The rich 
have spent their wealth on luxurious carpets- and rich divans, 
not on marble halls, because they knew that before the latter 
had been completed the bow-string might be their portion. At 
one moment a man is a slave, and the next he is a G-rand 
Yizier : then the wheel of fortune goes round, and he is an 
exile. Under these circumstances men snatch at the enjoy- 
ment of the moment; but think little of the past, and build 
little on the future. If they have enterprise, and if the 
oppression under which they suffer be the tyranny of caprice 
and individual rapacity (which each man hopes to escape), not 
the inevitable tyranny of rapacious laws, individuals will still 
accumulate wealth, but they will bequeath no monuments. 

In all respects, the external features of Constantinople are 
characteristic of an empire founded on a faith, and of a people 
gravely devoted to pleasure, and yet addicted also to meditation 
and a blind submission to fate. The three ideas which they 
express are, religion, enjoyment, and death. The first is repre- 
sented by the mosques and minarets, which tower above every- 



248 PICTURESQUE SKETCHES 

thing else ; the second by the ample baths and beautiful fount- 
ainS; with their projecting roofs, Moorish panel-works, and 
gilded lattices, within which the element which, in Greece and 
Italy, was ever taught to fling up its radiance into the sun, is 
jealousy guarded, like a beauty of the seraglio. The idea of 
death confronts you wherever you move through this paradise 
of the senses, not only in the cemeteries which swathe the sides 
of the hills with darkness, but in many a lofty and dome-sur- 
mounted tomb, in which a sultan, still regarded as the father 
of his people, receives in death the filial veneration of his sub- 
jects. The royal tombs thus scattered throughout the city, and 
intrusted, as it were, to the reverence of all who look up to the 
commander of the faithful, produce an incomparably more im- 
pressive effect than could possibly result from a single royal 
cemetery, or a funeral chapel in connection with one of the 
palaces. 

The first of these tombs which I saw took me by surprise. 
Not knowing what it was, I inquired of my guide concerning 
its destination. ^^ Gro near to it,'' he said, '' and you will dis- 
cover.'' It was a hexagonal building of white marble, sur- 
rounded by a projecting arcade of pillars, surmounted by a 
dome, wreathed around by lilies which forced their way up 
through its foundations, and partially shaded by a rifted plane- 
tree which flung the shadow of its waving branches on the 
white walls and golden lattices. Approaching the latter, and 
looking through them, I beheld beneath a vaulted and gilded 
roof, and, resting on a rich carpet, a coffin slanting upward to- 
ward the head, placed on a stately bier, and supporting, at the 
upper end, a white turban and a plume of sable feathers. At 
each side were ranged other coffins, smaller, but of various sizes, 
and without turbans or plumes, on which a few beams, strug- 
gling through the narrow and arched windows immediately 
under the roof, and half lost in the thick walls, fell with a feeble 



OF GREECE AND TURKEY. 249 

lustre. A circle of lamps were suspended from the roof, and 
in front of the cof&ns stood five or six loftj taperS; about twelve 
feet high, on golden pedestals. Within all was stillness and 
voluptuous gloom : without, the softness of the air and bright- 
ness of the sunshine derived an additional charm from the 
cooing of the doves in the plane-tree and on the roof of the 
building, " It is the Sultan Solyman/' said my guide. " In 
the large coffin beside him lies Roxalana, his wife. The small 
coffins contain some of his children, whom he put to death.'' 
'^And why did he put them to death?" I asked, ^^Oh, he 
thought they might become dangerous/' was the reply. There 
they repose together, the parent and the murdered children, in 
peaceful reunion. Probably those children thought there was 
as little to be surprised at in their fate as my cicerone did. A 
belief in fatalism reconciles men to all things. A real Belief 
in Providence would do as much to tranquilizer without interfer- 
ing with freedom of action. 



250 PICTURESQUE SKETCHES 



CHAPTER XVIII. 

CONSTANTINOPLE. 

General aspect of the city and its inhabitants — Veiled women — Car- 
riages drawn by oxen — The bazaar — Its armory — Method of deal- 
ing — -The Seragho — Palace of Beshik-Tash — The Sultan — An attempt 
to withstand the reforms — An imposture detected — Effect of the 
Sultan Mahmoud's reforms — Hills above Constantinople — Views of 
the city from the heights — Character of Constantinople — A confla- 
gration. 

The bearing of the people as you pass them in the streets at 
Constantinople is in strange harmony with the city, and must 
have been yet more striking before the late Sultan had com- 
menced his unfortunate and ill-advised reform of costume. The 
women, who glide past you, beside fountain and garden-wall, 
in their long white robes and veils, which allow no part of the 
face to appear but the dark and mournful eyes, might be almost 
taken for ghosts revisiting the scenes of past delights. Not less 
singular is the effect when those of a higher rank and more 
splendid attire drive slowly by in a carriage, at least as like a 
hearse as a Venetian gondola is like a coffin, consisting, as it 
does, of a shallow open body, richly gilded, without springs, and 
mantled by a canopy, sometimes of black cloth, and sometimes 
of a less gloomy color. The slow and heavy oxen, that com- 
monly draw these carriages, do not differ more from the agile 
horses of Attica than do the Turks from the Athenians, a con- 
trast by which I was, no doubt, the more impressed on account 
of my recent residence at Athens. In place of the merry laugh, 



OF GREECE AND TURKEY. 251 

the flashing eye, and the elastic gait, there was in each Turk 
whom I met an expression of melancholy self-possession, which 
could hardly have been more pronounced had he been invari- 
ably under the influence of opium. In place of billiards or 
dice, or any active game, the everlasting pipe, long or short, 
crooked or straight, was the resource of those who had no other 
occupation, and of many who had. Buying and selling, bar- 
gaining and conversing, seemed to be carried on in a state of 
somnambulism. Pleasure itself seemed a serious thing, and 
conserve of roses was handed to the customer with an air of 
heavy sedateness. "Bat,^' seemed the address of the grave 
Mussulman, "eat, true believer, before you die.^^ 

The bazaar of Constantinople is one of its most important 
regions, being, perhaps, only equaled in general estimation and 
reverence by the Sultan's seraglio, which is not a palace merely, 
but a vast and important district of Stamboul. The bazaar is, 
in fact, the palace of the people, where, shaded from the heat, 
each man may roam in a world as splendid as a mine, or the 
jeweled caverns existing in a child's imagination. To one who 
has an eye for rich and quaint pictorial effects the bazaar is an 
inexhaustible storehouse. The roofs of its long and narrow 
streets are supported by stone arches, sometimes connected by 
wooden galleries which span the dark passages below like 
bridges. If you take your stand upon one of these galleries 
and look along from arch to arch, and down upon the moving 
groups beneath, dressed in the costume of all nations, and seen 
sometimes in shadow, and sometimes by the oblique light of a 
slanting beam, you fancy yourself in the aisles of a cathedral 
without limits ; albeit one devoted exclusively to the service of 
the money-changers. If you descend from that aerial station 
you find yourself in the midst of a scene not easily to be matched 
for richness. As in a garden the splendor of coloring is much 
increased where flowers of the same species are allowed to 



252 PICTURESQUE SKETCHES 

flourish in large unbroken masses, so the gorgeous effect of the 
bazaar is enhanced by the circumstance that to every branch of 
trade a separate portion of it is allotted. 

The most brilliant part of this vaulted region is perhaps the 
armory, hung as it is with every species of arms, ancient and 
modern, for use or for display; helmets and shields, suits donned 
in many a chivalrous field, glittering spears, Indian bows, blades 
from Damascus, scimetars from Egypt, every species of harness 
in short for man or horse, embossed with gold and often with 
gems, enriched with arabesques, and disposed in the most fan- 
tastic patterns. In another part of the bazaar, and for the 
benefit of a softer class of customers, you find yourself in a 
meadowy wilderness of Cachemire shawls, numerous enough, 
one might imagine, to cover all the white shoulders that droop 
beneath ermine and diamond, in all the European capitals. 
In another part are suspended innumerable little mirrors en- 
chased with pearl, and mounted with golden handles, which 
are among the most favorite possessions of the daughters of the 
East, adorning their inmost retreats, and by no means left at 
home when they make expeditions abroad. Still more beauti- 
ful is that part devoted to embroidery in silk and muslin, where 
you find brocaded stuffs stiff enough to stand, and embroidered 
with flowers of every color, and mantles as if of woven air, 
almost invisible from thinness, except where they are covered 
in golden traceries with verses from the Koran, or some Per- 
sian love poem. Other parts of the bazaar are a blaze of 
jewelry — 

" A dusky empire with its diadems, 
One faint eternal eyen-tide of gems," 

radiant with every sort of precious stone, separate or enwreathed 
in necklaces and rosaries, or inlaid in precious cups, rich plate, 
housings for horses, and head-dresses for their riders. 



f 



OF GREECE AND TURKEY. 253 

In addition to this multitudinous array, other parts of this 
enclosed city of trade (the distilled essence one may imagine it 
of Corinth or of Tyre) are devoted to spices from all parts of the 
East, porcelain of every sort, fruit, preserved and dry, and that 
confectionery, in the preparation of which Constantinople has 
no western rival. There is no conceivable elaboration of fruit 
and sugar, with aromatic gums, precious juices, oils and creams, 
which is not to be found here in the prettiest and most various 
shapes, and scented with the most delicate odors. The interest 
of the scene is much increased by the strange aspect and bear- 
ing of the vendors of all those articles, some of whom are Jews, 
others Turks, while others are Grreeks, Armenians, or Persians. 
Many a keen eye is fastened on the unwary Frank the moment 
he is in sight, and many a finger beckons him on into the dusky 
recess in which the grave merchant is seated cross-legged on 
his carpet, with a pipe in his mouth. You enter, are. hospitably 
asked to be seated, and are perhaps handed a pipe. In a little 
time the goods are produced with a leisurely sedateness, and a 
price is named at least double their real value, the merchant, 
if he is a Persian, assuring you that in having been directed to 
an honest man you prove that you were born under a fortunate 
star, and that he is ofifering you the article for half what he 
paid for it. You decline his proposal ; he resumes his pipe in 
silence and apparent indifference, and at last rolls round on you 
a heavy sleepy eye, and names half the price he had demanded 
before. Your interpreter tells you that this time the price is 
a fair one, accordingly you pay down the money (the said inter- 
preter of course receiving a due proportion of it), rise up and 
depart. 

The most important district of Constantinople is that which 

is occupied by the Seraglio. It includes a large part of the 

ancient Byzantium, covering the triangular promontory which 

juts out into the waves opposite to Scutari. The Sea of Mar- 

22 



254 PICTURESQUE SKETCHES 

mora on one side, and the " G-olden Horn" on tlie other, bathe 
its ancient walls, behind which rise a multitude of domes, large 
and small, half-veiled by the cypress groves which embower 
them. During the absence of the sultan I was enabled to visit 
this palace, built on the spot on which that of the Emperors 
of the East had stood for a thousand years, and invested 
with a tragic interest by many a domestic catastrophe as de- 
plorable as those that commemorated the houses of Laius or 
Atreus. Its interest is, however, derived from its position and 
its history, not its architectural pretensions. Its courts, the 
cloistral arcades round which are, in some instances, surmounted 
by ranges of domes, numerous enough to be picturesque, though 
not large enough to present grandeur, are large and straggling, 
but without beauty; and the gardens, though richly decorated 
with trellis-work, fountains, and orange trees, are neither re- 
markable for their flowers nor for that sumptuousness and pomp 
which we associate with our idea of oriental gardens, and of 
which a fairer vision may, perhaps, be won from Tennyson's 
^^ Recollections of the Arabian Nights" than any spot in Turkey 
could present to the bodily eye. 

In a part of the garden close to the water side are the build- 
ings especially occupied by the sultan when resident in the Se- 
raglio, the site of which has evidently been chosen for the sake 
of the glorious view it commands. The buildings devoted to 
the royal wives and favorites are ranged round a court some- 
what collegiate in character. The interior of these buildings 
has seldom been seen by a European eye; and, indeed, until 
the last few years, it would have been at the risk of his life 
that either stranger or Turk, not belonging to the household, 
set his foot within the outer walls of the Seraglio. I was as- 
sured, however, that the apartments were as splendid as velvet 
and silk, gold and ivory, mirrors and marbles can make them ; 
and readily believe that in them, as the "Castle of Indolence," 



OF GREECE AND TURKEY. 255 

" Soft quilts on quilts, on carpets carpets spread, 
And couches stretch'd around in seemly band; 
And endless pillows rise to prop the head; 
So that each spacious room is one full swelling bed." 

On such a bed the Emperors of the East reclined, till the in- 
vincible janissaries knocked at their gates and startled their 
slumbers; and on such a bed the commanders of the faithful, 
no doubt, will continue to recline until the barbarians of the 
north command them to begone, and make way for a hardier 
race. 

;: The palaces of the sultan in the neighborhood of Constanti- 
nople, and on the banks of the Bosphorus, are almost beyond 
counting, and in many instances abound in picturesque effect 
and oriental pageantry. The largest of these comparatively 
modern buildings is called Beshik-Tash, and has little to recom- 
mend it except its vastness. The side of it which fronts the 
sea is adorned with a long colonnade of white marble ; but the 
rest of the building is shapeless and without expression — the 
consequence of its affecting the character of western architec- 
ture. Its position, however, is sufficient to atone for all defects. 
Seated opposite to Scutari, and turned toward it, the view 
which it commands includes a long reach of the Bosphorus as 
well as of the Sea of Marmora, and nearly the whole city of 
Stamboul. Before it lies the Turkish fleet, when in harbor, 
so near that the sighing of the wind through its cordage can be 
heard in its saloons, and behind it rise its gardens, stage by 
stage, along the steeps of a hill which preserves many a som- 
bre group of cypress and maple, and is richly fringed with 
acacias and almonds. As we approached its gate, advancing 
through a narrow passage, we met the sultan, who rode forth 
attended by his suite. He rode a white horse, was covered 
with a dark blue cloak, and wore a red cap. As he approached 
my Greek companion knelt down, a ceremony which I did not 



256 PICTURESQUE SKETCHES 

think it necessary to imitate. From the fact of our being the 
only intruders, I suspect we were where we had no business to 
be, or at least to be seen; but we did not on that account suffer 
any molestation. The countenance of the sultan was pale, 
and marked by an expression of sorrowful exhaustion. His 
dark melancholy eye rested on me as he passed; but I cannot 
therefore say that he looked at me ; and if he saw me it was as 
he might have seen a dark streak on the wall close to which I 
stood. That gaze in which there is nothing of recognition, and 
in which no distinction is made between an animate and inani- 
mate object, appears peculiar to the East — perhaps to absolute 
power in the East. 

An incident which occurred soon after the accession of the 
present sultan, shows that in some respects, at least, he is not 
indisposed to follow up the traditions of his race. At the be- 
ginning of a new reign the Ulenia was resolved, if possible, to 
prevent the new sultan from carrying on those reforms which 
had ever been so distasteful to the Turks, grating at once 
against their religious associations and their pride of race, and 
which recent events had certainly proved not to be productive 
of those good results anticipated by Sultan Mahmoud. To at- 
tain this object the Muftis adopted the expedient of working on 
the religious fears of the youthful prince. One day as he was 
praying, according to his custom, at his father's tomb, he heard 
a voice from beneath reiterating in a stifled tone the words " I 
burn." The next time that he prayed there the same words 
assailed his ears. " I burn" was repeated again and again, and 
no word beside. He applied to the chief of the Imams to 
know what this prodigy might mean, and was informed in re- 
ply that his father, though a great man, had also been, unfor- 
tunately, a great reformer, and that as such it was but too much 
to be feared that he had a terrible penance to undergo in 
the other world. The sultan sent his brother-in-law to pray at 



OF GREECE AND TURKEY. 257 

the same place, and afterwards several others of his house- 
hold j and on each occasion the same portentous words were 
heard. 

One day he announced his intention of going in state to his 
father's tomb, and was attended thither by a splendid retinue, 
including the chief doctors of the Mahometan law. Again 
during his devotions were heard the words '^ I burn,^' and all 
except the sultan trembled. Rising from his prayer-carpet he 
called in his guards, and commanded them to dig up the pave- 
ment and remove the tomb. It was in vain that the Muftis 
interposed, objecting to so great a profanation, and uttering 
dreadful warnings as to its consequences. The sultan per- 
sisted. The foundations of the tomb were laid bare, and in a 
cavity skillfully left among them was found — not a burning 
sultan, but a dervis. The young suhan regarded him for a 
time fixedly and in silence, and then said, without any further 
remark, or the slightest expression of anger, '' You burn ? then 
we must cool you in the Bosphorus.^^ In a few minutes more 
the dervis was in a bag, and the bag, immediately after, was 
in the Bosphorus; while the sultan rode back to his palace 
accompanied by his household and ministers, who ceased not 
all the way to ejaculate " Mashallah. Allah is great; there is 
no Grod but God, and Mahomet is his prophet.''^ 

Whatever we may think of the means adopted in this instance 
to subvert the late sultan's reforms, the present state of Tur- 
key cannot be said to offer any testimony in favor of those re- 
forms. In his endeavor to infuse a new spirit into an old and 
decrepit empire, Mahmoud attempted a task almost as hope- 
less as that of the pious daughters who cut the limbs of their 
aged parent into pieces after putting him to death, and threw 
them into a boiling cauldron, hoping that with the aid of 
^^ brewed enchantments and Medea's potent herbs,^^ that parent 
would stand among them once more ^^ a youth ^mid youthful 

22* 



258 PICTURESQUE SKETCHES 

peers/' If such, a transformation could have been effected in 
the case of the Ottoman Empire, assured!}^ it was not through 
a process which destroyed all distinctive pride of race, under- 
mined all old associations, and deprived the Turk of that 
strength which had remained his merely because he still con- 
tinued to believe in himself, and to believe that his Prophet 
was with him. If Mahmoud could have restored among his 
subjects the fervor of ancient faith, he would have needed no 
help beside. That, however, would have been a task almost 
hopeless in the case of the Turks, for their religion being essen- 
tially an aggressive one, and their mission being a mission of 
the sword, to stand still is to retrograde, and from the moment 
that the Crescent ceased to wax it necessarily waned. His 
endeavor, however, should at least have been to reanimate as 
far as he might that religious sentiment with which the whole 
social polity of Mahometan nations is absolutely identified, 
while by a reformation of manners, and by enforcing purity in 
the administration of justice he prepared the way for better 
things. It is the demoralization of Turkey which necessitates 
the downfall of the Ottoman Empire — its sensual vices, its 
constitutional indolence, and its administrative abuses. Such 
corruptions eat like a cancer into the social body, and invoke 
the cleansing hand of retribution. When a nation has con- 
tinued long sunk in those vices which are weaknesses also, 
its candlestick must be removed. It has done its part; and 
another nation is called to take its place. 

Instead of throwing himself on his only secure stay and re- 
animating his tottering empire with the true strength of an 
eastern people, Mahmoud endeavored to infuse into it a western 
vigor, and made the still stranger blunder of imagining that 
the energies of the west could be transplanted to Constantino- 
ple by mimicking its external peculiarities. Such an attempt 
was, of course, like all other affectations, a failure. In dis- 



OP GREECE AND TURKEY. 259 

carding the robe and the flowing beard the Turk divested him- 
self of those associations in which his real strength lay, without 
catching any new associations with which to replace them. 
Still less could he thus acquire the civilization of those whom 
he poorly imitated. Traditions may indeed be put off with an 
ancient costume, but arts and sciences are not put on with a 
new one. In many cases the change thus made was physic- 
ally, as well as morally, for the worse, in consequence of the 
disregard of custom and of climate which it involved. The 
Turkish cavalry had a firmer seat in their old saddle than they 
have ever acquired in their new, and the turban was practic- 
ally useful alike in shielding their eyes from the sun and in 
protecting their heads from the E-ussian sword. The Moslem 
too cannot but painfully feel that change in their outward 
aspect which the traveler observes and deplores. Dignity and 
gravity constituted the character of their outward aspect, and 
those attributes in a large measure disappear with the ridicu- 
lous and mongrel dress they have assumed. While they wore 
the turban, the robe, and the beard, they were considered the 
most noble in bearing of all European races. Stripped of 
those appendages they are sadly reduced in dignity and the 
grandeur of their appearance, and are as far as ever from ac- 
quiring the mincing graces of a western salon. 

The second expedition which I made at Constantinople 
enabled me to understand its peculiar character, and to enjoy 
its admirable beauty more than weeks of groping among anti- 
quities could have done. Leaving the crowded buildings of 
Pera behind, I ascended to that high ground which rises above 
the city and the villages that border the Bosphorus, swelling 
in some places into almost mountainous steeps, and in others 
expanding into downs or gently undulating wolds. Few things 
are more exhilarating than a gallop over these mountain plains, 
refreshed by the sea-breeze and enlivened by prospects ever 



260 PICTURESQUE SKETCHES 

varying, and of which the open and joyous beauty is hardly to 
be rivaled. Here and there they are sprinkled with pointed 
and inscribed stones jutting up from the soil, and erected on 
the spot upon which an arrow had fallen, shot from the bow 
of som-e sultan, and worthy, in the estimate of courtiers, of 
eternal commemoration. It is on these plains that the tra- 
veler first forgets his regrets on landing and making a more 
intimate acquaintance with Constantinople. I know not, in- 
deed, whether the spectacle on which he looks down be not 
even nobler than that which he contemplates from the sea. 
Beneath him lies the seven-hilled city, every part of which 
lifts up its domes and minarets, relieved in many places 
against the sea, of which you catch glimpses, now over the 
summits of the hills, and now over the depressed ground be- 
tween them. 

From the higher of these elevations you command at once 
the whole city, extending from the Seraglio point to the 
Seven Towers at one side, and round by Pera at the other, in 
conjunction with the Bosphorus, and the city of Scutari, to- 
gether with the lofty hill behind it, on the eastern slopes of 
which its cemetery of cypress stretches for miles away. In 
addition to this goodly array of nature's work and man's, the 
Sea of Marmora flashes before you in its purple and gold, 
crowded with the shipping of all nations, and backed by the 
mountains of Asia, prominent among which Bithynian Olym- 
pus lifts its snowy dome above that region which the great 
Council of Nice has made as memorable in the ecclesiastical 
world as Constantinople itself is in the secular. Though at 
a distance of sixty miles, that mountain (such is the brilliancy 
of its snows and the clearness of the air) looks so near, that 
you might fancy that the birds which rise in a startled flock 
from the court of some mosque below, shooting a glare of 



OP GREECE AND TURKEY. 261 

sudden sunshine from their slanted wings, migh reach it in 
a few minutes' flight. 

It is from these heights also that you have the full benefit 
of a circumstance, especially characteristic of Constantinople, 
namely, that every commanding spot being appropriated to 
religious or public buildings, you take no note, from a dis- 
tance, of its humbler details. Its insignificant wooden houses 
are then seen only in picturesque combination with the groves 
and gardens which embower them, and the colors which they 
are painted, yellow, red or black, according to the race of 
the inmate, are harmonized by distance, and blending with 
the light green of the fruit-trees, the dark green of the 
cypress, the purple of the sea and sky, the radiant white of 
mosque and mountain, and the occasional golden flash of 
the pointed minarets, compose a scene which bewilders and 
almost intoxicates by the splendor of its pageantry. Its 
peculiar efi'ects would be utterly destroyed if it boasted stately 
streets and lofty houses. From those heights you recognize 
it at once as a vast camp rather than a city, and as such 
you no more quarrel with its gaudy colors than you would 
with those of a flag. It is the great encampment of Islam 
on the shores of Europe. The Moslems themselves believe 
that in the Book of Fate a day is written, on which they 
will have to turn their faces once more towards the tomb 
of their prophet. I know not whether an obscure presenti- 
ment of this sort may not have contributed in some mea- 
sure to make each inhabitant of Constantinople contented 
with his frail and humble abode. Certain, however, it is, 
that if all the private houses were destroyed in one of those 
conflagrations which perpetually devastate Constantinople, or 
could be folded up like tents and struck in an hour, or rose 
like the flocks of sea-birds that skim the waves, and took 
their flight for the opposite shore, even then, the great 



262 PICTURESQUE SKETCHES 

buildings remaining, the general eifect of the city would be 
much what it is. It would still be the encampment where 
the children of the prophet speak with their enemies in the 
gate. It would be still the Grolden Gate of the ancient 
world, barring at will, or flinging open to the east and to 
the west, its two great watery portals, the Bosphorus and 
the Hellespont. 

I was not long at Constantinople before I came in for what 
is of very frequent occurrence there, namely, a fire. Indeed I 
believe, that as a storm is said to be always going on in some 
part of the sea, so a conflagration, larger or smaller, is always 
raging in some part of the narrow wooden streets of Stamboul. 
The people have few public amusements, and this is considered 
one of the best, if I may judge by the demeanor of the crowds 
whose singular bearing was to me more interesting than the 
spectacle I witnessed in common with them. At first I knew 
not what it meant. I had observed that vast multitudes were 
moving, with what for a Turk is haste, toward the court of one 
of their mosques, and stationing themselves, as soon as they 
had reached it, on the steps, balustrades, and every spot 
whence a view was commanded. Joining their company I 
discovered the cause of the assembly in a whole street, from 
which clouds of smoke were rising, and from which it was every 
moment expected that the flames would burst. Nothing could 
exceed the business-like alacrity of those who struggled for a 
place in the balconies, or the placid enjoyment of those who 
had attained one. In expectation of the event, piles of carpet 
and countless cushions had been already brought from the 
neighboring houses, and placed wherever room could be found. 
On these comfortable seats the multitudes had established them- 
selves, the men in one part, sedately smoking, the women in 
another, now looking on and now playing with their children. 
In a moment refreshments of all sorts were provided — sweet- 



OP GREECE AND TURKEY. 263 

meats, confectionery, and sherbet, by a number of rival pur- 
veyors who advanced with unalarmed alacrity amid the smoke 
and falling sparks, plainly considering the scene of destruction 
a sort of " benefit'* got up for their especial behoof, and unce- 
remoniously elbowing to one side the police, who rushed with 
pails of water on their heads to the rescue of the burning houses. 

In a few minutes more the flames burst out with a loud crash, 
mounting high into the heavens, and flinging an exciting and 
pleasurable heat into the face of the crowds who, without ever 
removing their pipes (except to drink), gazed with silent, but 
impassioned interest, on a scene which, to them, was no more a 
matter of surprise than a street preacher would be in Edinburgh, 
a " funzione" at Rome, or Punchinello at Naples. Among the 
calm crowd of spectators were the proprietors of the burning 
houses, smoking like their neighbors, and well assured that 
their loss had been determined by Allah long before the prophet 
was born. In one sense they were right enough. Doubtless, 
it has been predetermined that fires should be frec|uent among 
them, as long as their houses are built of wood ; and, indeed, I 
could not help thinking that they would never become rare 
until an opera is established at Constantinople, or the exhibi- 
tions of " howling dervises'' become more numerous. 

A Frenchman near whom I found myself, whispered to me 
that the Turks were a jealous people, and that if they suspected 
that I was gazing with satisfaction at their calamity, they would 
feel anything but contentment, for which reason he exhorted 
me to assume an " air bien triste." I soon discovered that he 
was right, warned by occasional knocks in the ribs, sufficiently 
emphatic to dispel any immoderate gleams of satisfaction which 
might appear on my face. Certainly, if I had smiled at a peo- 
ple who, entirely indifferent about their own loss of property, 
were moved only by a stranger's sharing that indifference, I 



264 PICTURESQUE SKETCHES 

miglit have stood excused. I soon discovered, however, that it 
was no laughing matter ; although, by changing mj place as 
soon as the portion of the crowd, in the midst of which I stood, 
had apparently seen enough of me, I contrived to remain a wit- 
ness of a most characteristic scene. 



OP GREECE AND TURKEY. 265 



CHAPTER XIX. 

THE BOSPHORUS. 

Scenery of the Bospliorus — Palaces on the Bosphorus — Festal groups on 
its banks — Varieties of female beauty in the East- — Turkish women 
• — Armenian women— Character of female subjection in the East — 
- Eastern habits of reverence and secrecy — Sunset on the Bosphorus — 
Therapia — Historic trees — The "Giant's Mount" — Genoese Castle— 
The Black Sea — The Symplegades — Scenery of the Asiatic valleys — 
The " Valley of Sweet Waters" — Castles of Europe and Asia — Eu- 
ropa — Influence of the East on the West. 

Of all the excursions wliicli can be made in the neighbor- 
hood of Constantinople, the most beautiful and interesting is 
that up the Bosphorus and to the Black Sea. Having received 
an invitation from our ambassador, who was resident at Thera- 
pia, I took advantage of that opportunity to make myself 
acquainted with those shores which few could have seen once 
without retracing them often in memory. Accompanied by 
Dr. K., an American missionary of the Episcopal church, with 
whom I was fortunate enough to become acquainted, and to 
whose kindness I was much indebted during my stay at Con- 
stantinople, I embarked in one of those light caiques, which 
glide with such exquisite grace and swiftness along the waves. 
Our boatmen were strong and sinewy; and as they pulled 
against the current of the river-sea, our slender and shell-like 
boat trembled with the speed of the water that rushed under it, 
and bounded forward with every stroke of the oars, like a young 
antelope panting up a hill. The Bosphorus, in its numerous 
23 



266 PICTURESQUE SKETCHES 

windingSj is so frequently land-locked, that, wbile its prevailing 
character is that of a wide and racing river, it spreads often into 
a series of lakes, each of the beauteous family having features 
peculiar to itself, while among them all there is yet sufficient 
of general resemblance to prevent the attention from being over- 
tasked, and the sense of harmony from being lost in variety. 
Its different scenes are but a series of exquisite variations on 
the same original air. 

In one of these lakes the expanse is wider and sunnier than 
in its neighbor ; in another, the rocks are steeper and the 
flowering shrubs more distinctly revealed. Here the heavy 
sea-birds are more clamorous as they half fly half float with ex- 
panded wings upon the pausing stream • there the water rushes 
in a swifter volume, and with many a darkened pool, round 
the marble terraces of the promontories, the fairest of which 
are sure to be crowned by some rich man's palace, the project- 
ing and indented roof casts a wavering shadow on the stream, 
and slightly obscures the gilded lattices, behind which (cages 
of imprisoned birds) the inmates of his harem are hidden. As 
we passed them, the breeze wafted us a sweeter fragrance from 
their gardens, and sometimes the sound of minstrelsy or the 
laugh of the captive beauties, gathered probably around some 
story-teller. Chained to the wall of the house, and tossing 
lightly on the ripple, or moored in a still canal passing under 
an archway into the palace, was commonly a caique, glowing 
with crimson and glittering with gold. I should have been 
glad to have seen the fair household embarking, but was not so 
fortunate. Occasionally the palace belonged to an exiled Bey, 
or a Minister on whom the imperial frown had fallen. In this 
case, through the rifted walls, still gay with paint, the wind 
sang a dirge, long forgotten by human lips, and the loudest 
voice in the thickets was that of the locust. 

Not less beautiful are those reaches of the Bosphorus, the 



OF GREECE AND TURKEY. 267 

scenery of wliicli is of a less festal cliaracter, where the hills 
are higher, the glens narrower, and the cypresses more thickly 
clustered. In several places the current was so strong that our 
boatmen were unable to pull against it. On these occasions we 
landed, and a number of men coming to our assistance, the 
caique was dragged, with the aid of ropes, past the projecting 
rock. Every interruption afforded fresh opportunities of enjoy- 
ing the scenes around us. In many places we passed close to a 
range of marble seats at the water's edge, on which, or near 
which, reposed gay companies of women, Turk, Greek, or Ar- 
menian, who had come forth to enjoy the sunset. Commonly 
the women of each nation sat apart ; but the delight with which 
they played with the children (a gayly dressed boy running 
from group to group, and being apparently received with equal 
favor at each) proved that whatever prejudices divided them, 
they had, notwithstanding, something in common ; and I dare 
say that if one of those children had fallen into the water, all 
would have been equally active in pulling him out. Whether 
by mischance, or but half by chance, on these occasions much 
more of their veiled face is frequently revealed to the gaze or 
glance of the passer by, than he makes acquaintance with at 
Constantinople. The Turkish countenance, with its beautiful 
oval shape, its colorless purity and wax-like stillness, and above 
all its dark, tender, and dreamy eyes, has a charm about it 
which the more brilliant Greek lacks. 

Severe charges are brought against the morals of Turkish 
women, and the jealousy with which they are guarded seems 
to corroborate them ; it is, however, to be remembered, that 
where no trust is reposed, no appeal is made to honor or to 
fidelity ; and that a wife who is but one out of several, and 
who is liable to be divorced, cannot even though she be de- 
votedly attached to her husband (a thing very possible), regard 
marriage as invested with that sacramental sanctity which 



268 PICTURESQUE SKETCHES 

crowns the Christian marriage vow. Her husband has proba- 
bly done more to corrupt than to elevate her nature ; and that 
virtue, the attribute of her sex, which remains with her, has 
not found a defender in her lord. She has grown into maturity 
like a plant, not only without instruction, but without that far 
more important education, the result of manners, traditions, 
and institutions, from which the humblest classes in other coun- 
tries receive a moral protection and an intellectual develop- 
ment. Mahomet promised his followers that in Paradise their 
sons should be born and grow up in the space of one hour. If 
the Turkish women grew up as quickly they could not be more 
children than they are. It is likely enough that, thus deprived 
of the '^ graver mind," which elevates the fidelity of instinct 
into a moral virtue, they regard every irregularity much as a 
child regards the robbing of an orchard ; but if we know no 
more of them than their devoted affection for their children, we 
could not doubt but that, in however undeveloped a state, the 
womanly virtues have an asylum in their breasts, and that the 
good seed, if planted there, would flourish as in a fruitful soil. 
Compared with the Turkish women, the Greeks struck me 
as almost vulgar in appearance ; though more frequently hand- 
some than those of Athens and the Morea, and invariably dis- 
tinguished by their black and flashing eyes. This effect was 
produced, no doubt, in part by the contrast between the seclu- 
sion of the veiled Turks, whose faces are seen but by stealth, 
and the unreserve of the G-reek attire, which consisted of a 
wide turban of gauze intermixed with flowers and tresses, and 
of a gayly colored jacket and petticoat, not loose enough for 
dignity, nor tight enough to reveal the grace of flowing outlines. 
The Armenian women are, as a race, the most lovely I have 
seen. Their eyes combine something of the Turkish languor 
with the " lamping" irradiation of the Greek. Their hair falls 
in waves of the glossiest black down their fair browS; and their 



OP GREECE AND TURKEY. 269 

complexion has the freshness of the rosebud's inmost leaf. 
Their forms are tall, and characterized at once by stateliness 
and a suave and gentle grace. Their movements are modest, 
but marked also by a soft decision. Nothing can exceed the 
picturesque beauty of those Armenian women, which is much 
increased by their oriental costume, their crimson slippers, their 
cloaks of brilliant green or blue, and the long white veils which 
stream over their drooping shoulders. They are accused of 
being insipid in character, the fact probably being that they 
are submissive, mild, and unadventurous. 

-In spite of the ordinary error, which associates especially 
with Mahometanism, that subjection of the female sex, which 
has prevailed in the East ever since the patriarchal times, the 
Christian Armenians not only live in as complete a seclusion 
as their Turkish sisters, but are also in quite as strict a thral- 
dom. Notwithstanding, I should think it likely that they are 
happy in their domestic relations. The subjection of women 
in the East did not arise originally from any want of apprecia- 
tion of that sex, though perhaps from an undue appreciation of 
one element which enters into its composition; and, like every 
other bondage long and willingly endured, has probably been 
maintained in consequence of the benefits it has conferred. In 
the West, whenever women have most completely thrown off 
that subjection, which in its milder forms is as graceful as a 
golden chain following the inclination of an ivory neck, the 
erring independence of the weaker sex, thus deprived of its 
natural support, has not been more strongly marked than the 
kindred irreverence of youth for age, of the pupil for the mas- 
ter, and of the client for his protector. In Parisian society, at 
its most corrupt period, a woman was perhaps allowed more 
^'of her own way" than she had ever had elsewhere; but it 
would be as difl&cult to prove that such misnamed liberty pro- 

23* 



270 PICTURESQUE SKETCHES 

ceeded from respect^ as that it conduced to security, to virtue, 
or to happiness. 

No doubt, in a perfect state of society, men and women 
would be more nearly on an equality, for in a more developed 
humanity the character of each sex would include more of 
those qualities which especially belong to the other. It does 
not follow, however, that in the attempt to leap at this conclu- 
sion women would acquire any of the nobler qualities belong- 
ing to men merely because they had discarded some of those 
peculiar to themselves. How long would women continue to 
preserve that remnant of chivalrous devotion with which they 
are still regarded if they were to assume the attire of men as 
well as manly privileges ? It is true that the degree of liberty 
as well' as of respect which they have long enjoyed in the 
West, is owing to the glory originally cast upon womanhood by 
Christianity, which ever exalts the weak, and ennobles, while 
it enforces, obedience : but it does not follow that the extended 
liberties of recent times have proceeded from the same source, 
or that those who would most discard the Old Testament 
model, are attracted in any peculiar degree by that of the 
Second Dispensation. As the subjection of women in the East 
has not resulted exclusively from tyranny, so their seclusion 
has not been the elFect of jealousy only: nor do veils and lat- 
tices date from the law of the Arabian prophet. The Asiatics 
have ever been averse to our western habits of publishing every- 
thing at the market cross. With them modesty is reserved, 
which, indeed, it naturally is, if not accompanied by coldness. 
With them promiscuousness and curiosity, the unashamed bold- 
ness, and the prying inquisitiveness, are the characteristics of 
the despised ^^dog." With them secrecy is a virtue; and the 
tongue that discloses all things, and the eye that is " in the 
ends of the earth,'^ are counted unfaithful and unclean. The 
root of this part of the eastern character is to be found in that 



OP GREECE AND TURKEY. 271 

yeneration which has ever been stronger in the East than in the 
West, and which has there imparted a peculiarly religious cha- 
racter to social and domestic institutions. It is to this instinct, 
no doubt, as well as to the more ardent passions of the East, 
that we are to attribute that seclusion of women which, like 
most institutions, has its good as well as its evil side. The 
habit of reverence and secrecy was strong even among the lively 
and loquacious G-reeks, who not only concealed their religious 
mysteries, but counted reserve as a virtue. Their domestic 
habits were not so remote from that of eastern nations as we 
imagine : and the Sicilian historian, Diceearchus, a disciple of 
Aristotle, informs us, in his treatise on the G-reek cities, that 
in Thebes ^^ the eyes of the women only are seen, the rest of 
their faces being covered by their garments. ^^ In Grreece the 
spirit of knowledge and the spirit of reverence hung for a long 
time in happy balance. Among them the mind was as naked 
as the statues of the Sun -god, the heart as secret as his Delphic 
shrine. 

It was late in the day when we arrived at Therapia, and the 
beauty of the scene was indescribably increased at the setting 
of the sun, which had for some time before been hidden by the 
woody hills. The pine trees, as we advanced, seemed to burn 
like flaming pyres, on the summit of their rocks. The white 
marble of the fountains was touched with a delicate pink, as 
the mountain snows, when a turn in the winding stream re- 
vealed them to us, were flushed with a roseate suff"usion. All 
objects became more distinct at once and more brilliant ; the 
shores appeared to approach each other : the very buds on the 
brakes, as we passed them, swelling out as if ready to burst, 
while the gilded lattices caught a brighter flame, and the gold- 
topped minarets shone like lamps against the cypressed slopes. 
The villages on every promontory exulted in the light ; and 
many a dusky glen, winding inward from the strait, seemed 



272 PiCTTJRESQtJE SKETCHES 

filled with a crimson mist, an effect produced either by its luxu- 
riant vegetation, or by some oblique ray, reflected from an orb 
invisible to us, which struck along its rocks and tinged its at- 
mosphere. The space beneath the groves looked dark as a 
cavern, while the foremost stems glowed with a ruddy light. 

We passed the night at Therapia, a village about halfway 
between Constantinople and the Black Sea, seated in the most 
beautiful part of the Bosphorus, and for that reason much fre- 
quented by ambassadors, most of whom have residences there, 
as well as by the more opulent Turks and Grreeks. Opposite 
to it the ships of many nations lie at anchor, with their re- 
spective flags streaming on the wind; and it happens not sel- 
dom, that while tacking up and down the strait they entangle 
their cordage in the lattices of the houses, or run a bowsprit 
right into an overhanging harem, no doubt to the mingled fear 
and mirth of its inmates, who, however, have never, I believe, 
attempted an escape by extempore embarkation in reply to so 
unceremonious a visit. Beyond Therapia are many interesting 
scenes, among others, one which claims historic fame. It is a 
wide flat plain, surrounded by high hills, in the centre of which 
stands a circle of immense plane-trees, the trunks of which rise 
so close to each other that they may almost be considered to 
constitute a single tree. Beneath their shade Peter the Her- 
mit is said to have preached the Crusade, and at a later period 
a Christian Prince halted there a troop of horse (I dare not 
state their supposed number) and bade them rest there as in a 
tent, during the noontide heats. At Therapia we crossed the 
water, paying first a visit to an English frigate that lay mid- 
way in the stream, and roamed all day long about the hills and 
dales of Asia. We began by climbing a steep hill, known by 
the name of the " Giant's Mount,^' which commands a view of 
the distant mountains, as well as of nearly all the reaches of 
the Bosphorus. Its broad smooth brow is garlanded by a na- 



OF GREECE AND TURKEY. 273 

tural chaplet of spreading oaks^ intermingled with lofty elms, 
and a rich underwood of holly. In the midst of the circle is a 
green space of soft and silky grass swelling upwards like a 
cushion, on which we lay for a long time, resting our eyes on 
the dark blue water far below, faintly descried under the 
branches of the trees, but sending up occasionally diamond 
scintillations through the drooping lid. 

Pursuing our way we came to a gaunt old ruin, a Grenoese 
castle placed on a commanding eminence — a skeleton memorial 
of ancient times, whose fleshy pride has wasted away. Our 
reverence for the two great maritime republics, Venice and 
Genoa, is greater in the East than in Italy ', for it is there that 
we realize the vast distance to which they pushed forth a mailed 
hand. That reverence, however, is far from being unalloyed. 
That power should degenerate into tyranny surprises no one ; 
but when it is associated with perfidy too, it affords no steady 
resting place even to the retrospective imagination. Genoa 
extended but small aid to the great Christian Metropolis of the 
East (which, but for the disunion and apathy of the Western 
Powers would never have seen the Cross displaced by the 
Crescent), and on not a few occasions it contracted for a sepa- 
rate peace. Power which is founded exclusively on commerce 
will commonly be directed mainly by a commercial estimate of 
the expedient and the inexpedient, and will leave behind it but 
few trophies of heroism and honest fame. 

This castle commands, from its rocky eminence, a view of 
the Black Sea, on which the Greek sailor looked with such 
aversion, contrasting it with his sunny Egean. As gloomy as 
its name its expanse spread far away into the distance, and I 
can easily believe that it is, as it is said to be, the laboratory 
of all the storms that vex the more westerly regions of the Sea 
of Marmora and the Levant, At the extremity of it, and just 
opposite to the entrance of the Bosphorus, stand the Cyanean 



274 PICTURESQUE SKETCHES 

rockS; the far-famed Symplegades. As I looked upon their 
lofty gray masses, and that rift between them, through which 
the Argo sailed, I was vividly reminded of that noble passage 
at the comm.encement of the Medea, in which the Nurse la- 
ments that the pine-trees had ever left their home on Pelion's 
side, or exercised in rowing the heroic arms that wafted her 
mistress from the Colchian shore. On the highest part of the 
rock is an altar of Parian marble — by whom placed, however, 
tradition keeps no record. Perhaps by a shipwrecked sailor 
whose gratitude, though not his name, has found a record. 

On our return, in place of pursuing the windings of the 
Bosphorus, we followed an inland path, passing along many a 
hollow glen, and stopping often to admire some new combina- 
tion of mountains, marked by those peculiar attributes of vast- 
ness, stillness, luxuriance, and smoothness which characterize 
the scenery of Asia. To describe those scenes in detail would 
be impossible. To all of them belonged the same character of 
openness, spaciousness, serenity, almost what might be termed 
magnanimity, by one who reads the features of nature in the 
hopes of tracing in them ^^an ebbing and a flowing soul," and 
who attaches a mystical interpretation to the works of creation 
as well as to the word of revelation. If the resemblance of 
these placid vales one to another might be charged with mo- 
notony, to me that monotony seemed (like the monotonous 
music of waves upon a far-off strand) to diffuse an indescriba- 
ble peace. I could have looked for the lotos in place of the 
arbutus ; but lotos in that region there is none. 

The most beautiful of these glens is one nearly opposite to 
Therapia, called the "Asian Valley of Sweet Waters." This 
is the favorite place of resort to the rich, and is especially 
thronged on Friday, the Mahometan Sabbath. Hither flock all 
the beauties of Constantinople for their holiday revel. Not 
only the wives of beys, emirs, and pashas, but the sultanas them- 



OF GREECE AND TURKEY. 275 

selves. Over the green grass their carriages, glittering with 
gold, and shaded by velvet and silken awnings, are slowly and 
noiselessly drawn by white oxen, and occasionally by horses; 
while the dark, voluptuous eye gleams upon the passer-by be- 
tween the breeze- stirred veil and the pillow of crimson satin on 
which the pallid cheek reposes. Through the plain wanders a 
pellucid stream, which falls into the Bosphorus, and on the 
banks of which tower up stately groves of plane-trees, from 
twenty to thirty feet in circumference, and disposed often with 
a regularity almost architectural. 

"A pillared shade witli echoing walks between." 

Under these tented groves the Persian carpets are spread, as 
well as many a cashmere shawl, and mantle of glowing orange 
or purple; and among them the revelers dispose themselves in 
festal groups, some smoking their pipes, some drinking sher- 
bet, some restraining a truant curl with the aid of a pearl- 
compassed hand mirror, some watching the feats of a conjuror, 
some listening to a minstrel, Jewish, Greek, or Wallachian, and 
some in deep attention to a story-teller from Persia or Arabia, 
whose endless narrative is interrupted now and then by a fear- 
less laugh ringing from the heart. From group to group pass, 
as the day wears on, the slave, carrying water from the fountain 
in silver pitchers, the confectioner, laden with baskets of fruit 
and sherbet, and — the strangest part of the spectacle — the 
Frank stranger, inquisitive and ill at ease, and looking as if he 
longed for business, sandwiches, and the Times newspaper, or 
even for Galignani. 

In this secluded valley and its neighborhood are many inte- 
resting objects. Not far from the Bosphorus, and in the midst 
of noble trees, stands the fountain of Guiuk-Suy, which gives 
to the region its eastern name. It is built of white marble, 
and is richly adorned with arabesques. The sultan has here 



276 PICTURESQUE SKETCHES 

one of his fifty-seven palaces, built on the Bosphorus, in the 
vain endeavor to enjoy all its countless beauties at once, by 
adding omnipresence to his other attributes. For ages the 
commanders of the faithful have made this valley their favorite 
resort, especially in the summer. Here they sit in state, and 
are wondered at by their subjects. Here they smoke an am- 
ber-headed pipe, so long that, as they mark the ascending 
wreaths of smoke, in mood more and more abstracted, while 
the nearer end of it is grasped close in the region of space and 
time, the remoter seems to hang over the limits of the universe, 
or rests on the garden wall of Paradise, watched by expectant 
Houris. Here they drink the coldest sherbet, and long for a 
palate as long as the neck of a swan, or the tallest lily stem 
that quivers in the Bosphorus. Here, also, they meditate on 
abysmal subjects, on the character of the prophet, on their 
own magnificence, prosperity, and sanctity; on the countless 
attributes of Allah, and his surpassing glories, as set forth in 
the triumph of the faithful people, the immutable decrees of 
fate, the splendor of peacock's tails, and the wonderful flavor 
of ^^ conserve of roses." Who can wonder if, after burying 
themselves in such contemplations, their heads should spin 
round as though they had drunk of the prohibited liquor, and 
they should send the bowstring to a distant pacha, command 
half a dozen of their children to be put to death, or even pro- . 
hibit to the faithful the "nourriture" of the beard, and the use 
of the sacred turban. 

Close to the "Asian Valley of Sweet Waters" rises the "Ana- 
doli Hissari," one of the celebrated "Castles of Europe and 
Asia." In later times it was used as the prison of the Bos- 
tangis (the sultan's body-guard), who were occasionally some- 
what rapidly transferred from its dungeons to the waters of the 
Bosphorus. On the opposite side of the strait is the Roumeli 
Hissari, or European Castle, built, as is asserted, on a ground 



OP GREECE AND TURKEY. 277 

plan, the foundation walls of whicli form the letters of the 
prophet's name. This castle was the prison of the janissaries. • 
One of its most important parts bears the ominous name of 
" the tower of blood.'' In it the chiefs of the janissaries, when 
suspected of conspiracy, were executed in secrecy, lest the alle- 
giance of the body should be disturbed, and were conveyed by 
a subterranean passage to the water that rushes beyond its 
walls. When one remembers the multitudes whose last sob 
has been stifled by the waves of the Bosphorus, one is not sur- 
prised at the prevalent superstition that the wailing sea-fowl, 
which fly above the strait in multitudes that sometimes darken 
the water, are the souls of the departed, subjected to a state of 
penance. It was between these castles that Darius constructed 
that bridge of boats with which he connected the two continents. 

Far more interesting, however, in its associations, is the vil- 
lage of Candalie, which tradition has united, whether justly or 
not, with the story of Europa, a fairer link between the two 
continents. Those who place no faith in the Bull which gave 
the Bosphorus its name, may, notwithstanding, believe that 
Europe once sent forth a Lover, as brave and as unscrupulous, 
who lifted up his eyes to the daughter of Asia as she sported 
among " her comrades equal-aged,'' and was as richly crowned 
by her as Jupiter was said to have been, when from the milk- 
white flanks of the illusive shape he assumed, the garlands fell 
upon the deep. 

How difl"erent in character is that poetic legend, which cele- 
brates the union of Asia with Europe, from the sublime truth 
at once of faith and science, which impelled the barque of the 
great European discoverer to a new Continent beyond a more 
perilous sea. The diiference between the artistic love-fiction, 
and the heroic triumph of knowledge, illustrates in so small 
degree, the opposite spirit which animated the early Hellenic 
mind, and directed the aspirations of modern Europe. And 
24 



278 PICTURESQUE SKETCHES 

yet Low much, even for us moderns, is contained in that 
ancient legend ! What mighty result is destined ultimately 
to spring from the united energies of Europe and America we 
know not ; hut we know that it is from the union of Asia and 
Europe, symbolized in the Rape of Europa, that we owe almost 
all of high and noble that we possess. It was in Greece that 
the influences of the east and the west first met, and assuredly 
at the confluence of these two mighty tides the human intelli- 
gence mounted to a height never before known. What is 
there deep or great among us in which an eastern element is 
not to be traced ? All our arts, (elaborated indeed with a 
zeal which the graver Hebrew would have stigmatized as but a 
"following out of strange inventions,^') so far as they acknow- 
ledge an Hellenic origin, rest on an Asiatic foundation. All our 
moral and metaphysical systems are but new adaptations of 
ancient Oriental philosophy. The whole hierarchical structure 
of European society, so far as it is based on the idea of gradu- 
ated orders, and not merely on superior force, is but the de- 
velopment, under whatever name of feudality, clanship, or 
aristocracy, of a principle as old as the patriarchal times. It 
is the same in our religion. The Bible (considered in its ex- 
ternal relations) was written from one end to the other of both 
Testaments by Asiatics, and Asiatics of a single race ; the 
earlier G-eneral Councils were Asiatic; the creed, and the 
leading principles of church government, so far as they are to 
be counted human in origin, come to us from the East. In 
most of the greatest minds that have risen up among us, even 
in modern times, an Asiatic element is to be traced with more 
or less of distinctness. Wherever we build with solid materials 
we build on an Asiatic foundation ; and Shem, amid the isles 
of the G-entiles, reposes in those tents which his more active 
brother Japhet is ever planting and shifting. 



or GREECE AND TURKEY. 279 



CHAPTER XX. 

CONSTANTINOPLE. 

St. Sophia's— Interior of St. Sophias — The Achmetie — Its court — Foun- 
tain — Inscriptions — The Yeric Djami — The Suliemanie — Its interior a 
Christian church — Ancient Mosaics — The Golden Horn — Cemetery 
^nd mosque of Eyoub — The European " Valley of Sweet Waters" — 
The Armenians — The "Mosque of Blood." 

No other buildings in Constantinople approach in interest to 
the mosques, all of which derive a character of grandeur from 
the fortunate circumstance that they follow the model ex- 
hibited in that building which made Justinian give thanks to 
Grod, who had permitted him to raise a cathederal that sur- 
passed the glory of Solomon's Temple. After the lapse of 
nearly fourteen centuries, St. Sophia continues to lift on high 
that dome, the first that ever was raised to any considerable 
elevation, and the Mother Church, as it may be called, of every 
dome-surmounted fane in Europe. To its family belong St. 
Mark's at Venice, the glorious Duomo of Florence, our own 
St. Paul's — nay, St. Peter's itself. How many of its children 
have died before it : how many may it not still be destined to 
survive ! It is the third temple that has stood on that spot. 
The first St. Sophia, built by the great Constantino, was de- 
stroyed by an earthquake ; the second, built by Constantius, 
fell a victim to popular tumult, being burned in one of those 
intenstine feuds which troubled Constantinople during the 
earlier part of Justinian's reign. The present building has 
suffered little external change, and may yet lift the G-reek 



280 PICTURESQUE SKETCHES 

Cross into heaven, and suspend its firmament over a Christian 
altar, centuries after the Crescent has ceased to insult the 
European shores. 

The comparative flatness of St. Sophia's principal dome de- 
prives it of that soaring expression which belongs to some of its 
great descendants ; but he would be an undiscerning as well as 
a cold critic who could see little to admire in this venerable 
pile. It does not carry its head, it is true, with as lofty a port 
as its neighbor the Achmetie ; but it still expresses a venerable 
strength, although a strength which needs, as well as imparts 
protection. Its low dome, flat as that of a tonsured head, 
leans for support on those mighty walls which again lean 
upon others beyond them, gradually decreasing in elevation, so 
as to give to the upper part of the building somewhat of a 
pyramidal effect. A succession of half domes and shelving 
roofs press upon these walls, which are connected with each 
other by an endless series of buttresses and arches. The whole 
building seems thus to lean inwards upon itself for support, 
bound together, like an empire in decline, by innumerable 
bands and props, one growing out of another. It is character- 
istic of the Grreeks, as lovers of knowledge rather than of law 
or of rule, that this, their great cathedral, should have been 
dedicated to the eternal icisdom of the Father. The Romans 
called their metropolitan church (the palatial temple of the 
world) by the name of him to whom were committed the 
Keys ; and the English consecrated their great modern church 
to the Apostle of the nations. Such actions, even when de- 
termined in part by accident, indicate something as to the as- 
pirations, if not as to the habits and characters of nations. 

St. Sophia, like every other religious building in Constanti- 
nople, is approached by a large and cloistral court. This court 
is paved with marble, and over its shining platform many a 
plane-tree casts its shade. In the midst is a marble fountain, 



OF GREECE AND TURKEY. 281 

covered "with an octagonal roof, which projects far beyond it, 
and screened by a lattice-work of iron. In this water the de- 
votee washes before he enters the sacred building; and many a 
group spread their carpets and smoke their pipes around, inter- 
spersed with pilgrims from remote lands, and merchants who 
sell relics, amulets, and other merchandize of a less dignified 
order. 

Few Christians have ever been allowed to examine in its 
details the interior of St. Sophia's; a glance from the doors, or 
a hurried survey, is commonly the traveler's utmost boast. 
The opposition thrown in the way of a leisurely inspection is 
th^ less to be regretted, however, as it is the interior of the 
building which has suffered most by that change which has 
converted it into a mosque. Its main features remain still un- 
subverted. The Turks were not barbarous conquerors : indeed, 
on the very day when St. Sophia's fell into their hands, Ma- 
homet the Second, observing a fanatical soldier tear up the 
Mosaic pavement, admonished him to reverence with his scime- 
tar. Whitewash, however, has done its best to obscure what 
it has not destroyed. Probably whoever has wandered round 
St. Mark's has seen what more nearly resembles the St. Sophia 
of Justinian than the traveler who explores the building at the 
present day. Its dome, composed of pumice-stone and brick, 
and pierced with twenty-four windows, is a hundred and fifteen 
feet in diameter, and hangs at the height of a hundred and 
eighty feet above the pavement, the arches which support it 
resting upon four massive piles, flanked by four columns of 
Egyptian granite. The building, which externally is nearly 
square, being two hundred and seventy-three feet in length, by 
two hundred and forty-seven in breadth, is internally divided 
by pillars into the shape of a Greek cross. It is, however, the 
general character of the building only which remains un- 
changed. We should now probably look in vain for the west- 

24* 



282 PICTURESQUE SKETCHES 

ern vestibule in wbich the penitents took their humble station; 
and certainly, for its baptistery, its gorgeous sacristy, the mar- 
ble balustrade separating the nave from the choir, and termi- 
nated by the thrones of the emperor and the patriarch, the 
altar in the eastern apse, the seats of the clergy around it, the 
brazen galleries and gates of bronze, and the countless Mosaics 
and precious stones and metals with which the shrine was en- 
riched. 

The marbles of St. Sophia were the most elaborate and varied 
that the world could supply, including, among its hundred co- 
lumns, every species, the pale Carystian, the Phrygian of rose 
color or purple, the starred porphyry of Egypt, the green Laco- 
nian, the golden Mauritanian, the black Celtic, and as many 
more, besides every variety of agate and jasper, which private 
zeal or public munificence could transport from the quarries of 
Asia Minor, the Greek islands, and every subject land from Per- 
sia to Spain. Few great churches have been raised with such 
rapidity as St. Sophia's. Under the care of Anthemius, the archi- 
tect, and his ten thousand laborers, encouraged by the familiarity 
of the Emperor, who is said to have inspected at stated intervals 
their advancing work, clothed in a linen tunic, the cathedral was 
completed in less than six years from its foundation. 

Near to St. Sophia's, between it and the Hippodrome, stands 
one of the loftiest and richest of the mosques, that which bears 
the name of the Sultan Achmet. Lifting on high its haughty 
dome, the curve of which is far more elevated than that of its 
neighbor, it differs from the church of Justinian as an elm 
differs from a spreading oak. Beneath the central cupola are 
clustered several smaller domes and half-domes. The Achmetie 
boasts no fewer than six minarets, each enwreathed with three 
galleries, from one of which the clear tones of the Muezzin 
pealing from the shining vault, like a divine summons, calls 
the people to prayer. Every royal mosque is marked by the 



OF GREECE AND TURKEY. ^83 

adjunct of two minarets, and several of them possess four, but 
the Achmetie alone has six. It is to be hoped that, whenever 
the Russians are in possession of Constantinople, they will not 
pull down those light and beautiful structures, which, rising 
from an undergrowth of domes, produce a singularly fortunate 
effect, analogous to that which we observe in our pleasure 
grounds, where the cypress or the Lombardy poplar spires up 
from a thicket of round-headed shrubs. 

The court of the Achmetie is surrounded by a cloister, the 
pillars of which consist of many-colored marbles (fortunately 
not whitewashed), supporting arches each of which is crowned 
by a low dome. In the centre stands a hexagonal fountain, 
the dome of which rests upon six sharp and lofty arches, in 
their turns supported by the quaint elaborate capitals of the 
slender columns. The beauty of these fountains is much in- 
creased by their golden lattices, which cast a glittering network 
on the dark water within, and a braided shadow on the pave- 
ment around. In this court you see amid the motley crowd, 
as usual, the merchant with his wares, and the Turk with pipe, 
or sometimes a votary absorbed in prayer, and kneeling with 
his forehead to the pavement. Far above all, seen over this 
cloistral arcade, rises the central dome, and one or two of those 
minarets,- the line of which serves to define its curve. The 
cloisters of most mosques are largely frequented by those 
friendly and fearless birds which the Moslems so reverently 
protect. In one of them so vast is the number of doves, at- 
tracted there by the liberality of the faithful, that when they 
rise from the pavement on which they have been feeding, the 
echoes of the court are thrilled with a soft thunder, and the 
air is shaken as by a storm, while the branches of the almonds 
wave around in the darkened space, and a few blossoms drop to 
the ground. 

The porches through which you enter the mosques are among 



2S4 PlCTtJRESQUE SKETCHES 

the most picturesque parts of the buildings. They are sur- 
mounted by exquisite little vaults or roofs^ as richly fretted 
with carved work as the roof of a bishop's throne in one of 
our cathedrals. Above them extend, in golden traceries, mystic 
inscriptions in the Arabic character, consisting chiefly of sen- 
tences from the Koran, which, flashing from a groundwork of 
dark green or purple, gleam like mimic constellations reflected 
in the sea. Everywhere in Constantinople, over gate, and tomb, 
and bath, and palace front, you are confronted by those blazoned 
texts from the Koran, which are scattered as widely as devout 
pictures are in Roman Catholic countries, and look as if the 
endeavor had been to make the city one great book. Nowhere 
has bibliolatry, or devotion to a book, been carried further than 
among the Moslems. The reason is to be found, probably, in 
the fact that their religion, instead of including a law, is simply 
a law, as well as in the rationalistic character of their mind, 
and in the absence of imaginative sentiment within them, and 
of the more genial arts around them. 

The Yeric Djami, or mosque of the Sultana Yalide, is the 
most picturesque of all in its position, rising close to the ferry 
between Galata and Stamboul, in a neighborhood ever thronged 
with travelers new landed, merchants hastening to inspect their 
goods, and idlers frequenting the market-place for news. From 
the midst of the sombre or gaudy buildings, huddled in strange 
confusion along the shore, it lifts up its serene and radiant 
mass like a vision of purity in a corrupt world : almost beneath 
its shadow the homeward boat swings with furled sails upon 
the green and darkened wave, now falling back from the wall, 
and now dashing against it ; and within its ken innumerable 
caiques, those Arab steeds of the sea, fleet over the sunny ex- 
panse in the distance. The most characteristic feature of this 
mosque is its majestic portal, consisting of three vast and lofty 
arches, the pillars of which rest on a wide flight of marble steps. 



OF GREECE AND TURKEY. 285 

Looking through these porches, which, from their great depth, 
are dusky as a grotto, you see dimly its brazen gates, studded 
with mother-of-pearl. In line with these porches runs a ter- 
race, surmounted by a sort of double gallery, consisting of two 
ranges of arches one above another. These arches, which consti- 
tute the outer wall of the building, are of two different heights 
and sizes, the larger and the smaller occurring alternately, and 
are supported on the florid capitals of low pillars. The pictur- 
esque effect of this fa§ade is much increased by the immediate 
neighborhood of two immense maple trees, which lift their hol- 
low turrets high into the air, and extend their fresh green 
canopy against a sky of glistening blue. Beneath the dome 
rests the tomb of the foundress. 

In one respect the " Suliemaine," or mosque of Solyman the 
Magnificent, is the most imposing of all these structures, occu- 
pying, as it does, the most elevated ground in Constantinople. 
Beside its central dome it is surmounted by ten others, of in- 
ferior size, and by several half domes. It measures 234 feet 
in length, by 227 in breadth, and its internal court is also of 
unusually large dimensions. Before its lofty portal stand a 
range of columns of Egyptian granite, and above it runs an 
Arabic inscription, stating that the lord of the earth, the com- 
mander of the faithful, and the conqueror of east and west, the 
tenth Emperor of the Ottomans, had raised this temple to the 
glory of God, the Creator of the universe, between the years 
1550 and 1556 — about the same number of years having suf- 
ficed for the building of Solyman' s and of Justinian's temple. 

The Suliemanie, like most other mosques, has its cloister, 
its minarets, its fountain, its pious institution (in this instance 
a bedlam), and its medresseh, or college. There are not fewer 
than twelve such colleges, with libraries attached to them, in 
Constantinople; but their learning, I fear, may be numbered 
among the things gone by. The interior is stately, though not 



286 PICTURESQUE SKETCHES 

divested of that characteristic coldness and blankness which 
belongs to mosques. Its domes^ round the lower region of 
which runs a sort of belt, pierced through with numerous very 
minute windows, are supported each by four vast arches. These 
arches arC;, in some instances, partially filled up by a wall, itself 
supported by smaller arches propped on pillars, and pierced in 
its higher compartment by several ranges of round-headed win- 
dows. Beneath the chief dome runs a circle of brass, from 
which innumerable colored lamps, lighted at night, are sus- 
pended by chains. The effect is brilliant, of course, but the- 
atrical rather than ecclesiastic. The pillars of the Suleimanie 
are brought chiefly from Alexandria Troas. The walls are 
decorated with gilded traceries, consisting of sentences from 
the Koran, as well as the many mystical names of the Creator, 
inscribed in Arabic. These are the chief mosques in Constan- 
tinople, and the models after which the rest have been built. 
Most of them abound in precious marbles, and many of them 
possess interesting peculiarities. The most interesting to Chris- 
tian eyes is that which bears the name of " Kilisi giamisi." It 
was originally a church built by the Emperor Anastasius, and, 
like St. Sophia's, pines in bondage. By a fortunate accident 
there remain on one of its domes some pictures in mosaic, rep- 
resenting the crucifixion, and other sacred themes. How they 
escaped the Turkish fanaticism it is hard to say. 

There are few things which the sojourner at Constantinople 
enjoys more than an expedition by boat up the winding haven 
of the ^^Grolden Horn,'' a title which might equally be justified 
by the glorious light which morning and evening flings upon 
the mouth of the harbor, and by the matchless provision made 
for commerce ; which, following its windings for seven miles 
through the city, might empty her Cornucopia on its banks. 
On one side, as you enter it, extends the Seraglio, and, beyond 
it, St. Sophia and the mosque of the Sultan Achmet : on the 



OF GREECE AND TURKEY. 287 

other, rises the Frank city of Pera, with its suburbs of Tophana 
and G-alata, domineered over by the ambassadors of the great 
European powers, who, in the present decrepit condition of the 
Ottoman empire, far from being exposed to any chance of an 
imprisonment in the Seven Towers, are looked up to as so 
mapy kings, both by the inhabitants of Stamboul and by their 
own countrymen. Your caique shoots rapidly along the water, 
passing the ships of all nations, which lie so close to the citied 
shores that their canvass seems to lean on the projecting roofs. 
Pursuing your way beyond a wooden bridge, of great length, 
which spans the flood, you reach, at its further end, the district 
of Eyoub, situated at the north-eastern extremity of Stamboul, 
and regarded as its most sacred region. Far up the hill, and 
commanding the noblest views from the European side of the 
water, rises its cemetery, only inferior in sanctity to that of the 
Asiatic Scutari. Among the tombs which its multitudinous 
cypresses shade, is that of the far-famed Ali Pacha of Yanina. 
The contrast between the two views commanded from this 
cemetery is striking ; one of them extending over the city, the 
sea, the Bosphorus, Scutari; and, behind it, the dark steep of 
Bulgurlhu, and being, therefore, eminently marked by the 
characteristic splendor of Constantinopolitan scenery ; while the 
other reveals to you a quiet and shady glen, the European 
"Valley of Sweet Waters," with its deep green grass and its 
stately trees. 

The Mosque of Eyoub is one of the largest in Constantinople, 
and probably, is the richest. On this subject, however, we 
have nothing but conjecture to guide us ; for no Christian, I 
believe, has ever been admitted into its interior. This temple 
is the great sanctuary of Stamboul, a sort of domestic Mecca. 
It was raised by Mahomet the Second, a few years after the 
capture of Constantinople, in memory of a certain warrior of 
the Faith, and companion in arms of the Prophet himself, who 



288 PICTURESQUE SKETCHES 

fell, a martyr in the estimate of his brother warriors, in the 
siege by the Saracens, in 668. The exact spot on which the 
Arabian chief had fallen was revealed in a dream of the sultan, 
if we are to trust his account of the matter. Mahomet the Se- 
cond set another seal upon the sanctity of this temple, by de- 
creeing that, within its walls, the sultans should be girded with 
the Sword of Empire, successively and forever. The ceremonial 
is ever performed by the Scheick of the Mevlevi Dervishes, 
entitled Mollah Hunkiar, in whose family the right remains, on 
account of its being descended from the race of the Abbas- 
sides. The representative of that sacred race may be an old 
man on the verge of the tomb, or he may be an infant; but 
until his hands have bound the girdle of the Sword of Othman, 
the Sultan lacks that religious consecration which invests him 
with his two-fold dignity of Emperor and Commander of the 
Faithful. 

This ceremony does not inappropriately take place in the 
temple dedicated to the memory of Eyoub, or Job. In his 
youth he had been among those who sheltered Mahomet, 
when a fugitive. He had fought under the standard of the 
Crescent in many an arduous battle : he had been a follower 
of Ali, as well as of the Prophet; and it was in his old age 
that the Arab chieftain engaged in that enterprise against what 
he, no doubt, considered as the metropolis of Christendom, 
which, as Mahomet had announced, assured the forgiveness of 
their sins to all soldiers serving in the holy cause. The fol- 
lowers of the Prophet regard him with feelings similar to those 
once entertained among Christians toward Godfrey of Bouillon, 
or any other great Crusading chief. 

Beyond the district of Eyoub, and the limits of the city, lies 
a still and beautiful vale, one of my favorite resorts while in 
Constantinople — the celebrated ^' Valley of the Sweet "Waters." 
It is surrounded on all sides by hills, which shield without 



OF GREECE AND TURKEY. 289 

overshadowing it, and its smooth expanse is covered with the 
richest and greenest grass (the pasture during spring of the 
Sultan's Arab horses), and traversed by the silver current of 
the Barbyses, as it winds its way to the " Golden Horn/^ Over 
this shallow but secluded vale, trees of a stately height and 
venerable age are scattered, sometimes singly, but more often 
in groups. In summer this spot is, even more than the Asiatic 
Valley of Sweet Waters, the resort of all who love idleness or 
gayety. On these occasions it is not the votaries of pleasure 
only whom you meet there ; the merchant is there likewise, and 
not a little of business is done. There the Greek makes his 
best bargain, and talks his customer out of patience, if not out 
of countenance. The Jew there realizes his profit, and there 
the patient Armenian meditates, and turns whatever happens 
to the best account. That race interested me much during my 
stay at Constantinople. They belong for the most part to the 
Greek Church, but they are divided into several distinct religious 
communities, and no small proportion of them are governed by 
a Patriarch, who, though he preserves many local peculiarities 
of worship, acknowledges the supreme authority of the Roman 
Pontiff. One recognizes them at once by their high and oval 
foreheads, round which the hair is shaven, their extreme pallor, 
which in some parts of the face seems tinged with a faint lilac, 
their singular smoothness of countenance, their expression of 
long suffering (they have clung in their captivity to their an- 
cestral institutes with almost a Jewish fidelity), and a certain 
heavy gleam in the drooping eye, which resembles a dying lamp 
when the light has burned down to the oil in which it is mir- 
rored. 

The sultan retires for a portion of each year to his palace in 
the " Yalley of the Sweet Waters," and to this quiet region the 
imperial harem is transferred on these occasions. That trans- 
ference creates a great confusion in the city, the surrounding 
25 



290 PICTURESQUE SKETCHES 

hills being occupied with troops, while a regular cordon is es- 
tablished round the valley to prevent the public from catching 
even a distant sight of the fair sultanas, whose progress is con- 
ducted with as much mystery as attended the ride of Godiva. 
A more interesting object than the palace is seen at the further 
end of the glen : a mosque, which, lonely and retired as it iS; 
derives a deeper seclusion from the thick plane trees that clus- 
ter all around it, through which its crowded domes are hardly 
visible. The whole of this mosque is painted red, and its his- 
tory is implied in its ominous title, " The Mosque of Blood." 
During a period of intestine feud at Constantinople, it was 
broken into by a body of soldiers, many of whom perished on 
its pavement; in consequence of which desecration, it now 
stands a deserted temple. There is something at once myste- 
rious and touching in the aspect of this forsaken fane, which 
was the goal of many of my wanderings among the hills around 
Stamboul. 



OP GREECE AND TURKEY. 291 



CHAPTER XXI. 

ADVENTURE IN A HAREM. 

A French adventurer — Fortune made by conjuring — Conjuring ex- 
ploits — Visit to the house of a Turk — His mother — His wives — 
Beauty of Eastern women — The favorite — Circassian beauty — 
Failure of the Conjuror's incantations — A timely retreat. 

A SHORT time before leaving Constantinople I enjoyed a 
piece of good fortune, which I believe has fallen to the lot of 
few men. Often as I passed by the garden walls of some rich 
pacha, I felt, as every one who visits Constantinople feels, no 
small desire to penetrate into that mysterious region — his harem 
— and see something more 'than the mere exterior of Turkish 
life. ^^ The traveler landing at Stamboul complains," I used 
to say to myself, ^^ of the contrast between its external aspect 
and the interior of the city; but the real interior, that is the 
inside of the houses, the guarded retreats of those veiled forms 
which one passes in gilded caiques, of these he sees nothing." 
Fortune favored my aspirations. I happened to make acquaint- 
ance with a young Frenchman, lively, spirited, and confident, 
who had sojourned at Constantinople for a considerable time, 
and who bore there the character of prophet, magician, and I 
know not how much beside. The fact is, that he was a very 
clever fellow, living on his wits, ever ready to turn his hand to 
anything, and numbering among his other accomplishments, a 
skill in conjuring feats extraordinary even in the East. He used 
to exhibit frequently before the sultan, who always sent him 



292 PICTURESQUE SKETCHES 

away laden with presents, and would, probably, had he professed 
the Mahometan Faith, have made him his Prime Minister or 
his Lord High Admiral. 

There was nothing which this conjuror could not do. He 
told me that on one occasion, dining in a numerous company, he 
had contrived to pick the pocket of every one present, depriving 
one of his watch, another of his purse, and a third of his pocket- 
handkerchief. As soon as the guests discovered their losses, to 
which he managed to direct their attention, a scene of violent 
excitement ensued, every one accusing his neighbor of theft; 
and at last it was agreed that the police should be sent for to 
search the pockets of all present. The police arrived, and the 
search was duly made, but without any effect. " I think,^' said 
the young magician, " it would be but fair that the police should 
themselves undergo the same scrutiny to which we have all sub- 
mitted." The suggestion was immediately acted on, and to the 
amazement of all present, and especially of the supposed culprits, 
in the pockets of the police all the missing articles were found. 

The life of this man had been strange and eventful. Having 
quarreled with his family in early youth he had assumed an in- 
cognitOj and enlisted as a private soldier; I forget in what ser- 
vice. On one occasion, in his first campaign, he was left for dead 
on the field of battle. In the evening some peasants visited the 
field for the sake of plunder. He was badly wounded, but had 
his wits sufficiently about him to know, that if he wished not 
to have his throat cut, he had better lie still and feign to be 
dead. In his turn he was visited by the marauders; but, as 
fame goes, it so fell out that while they were hunting after the 
few pence he possessed, he contrived to lighten their pockets of 
their accumulated spoil. He had grown tired of the war, how- 
ever, and had settled in Constantinople, where he embarked in 
all manner of speculations, being bent, among other things, on 
establishing a theatre at Pera. In all reverses he came down, 



OP GREECE AND TURKEY. 293 

like a cat, on his feet : he was sanguine and good-humored, al- 
ways disposed to shuffle the cards till the right one came up; 
and trusting a good deal to fortune, while he improved what 
she gave, he was of course rich in her good graces. 

One day this youth called on me, and mentioned that a chance 
had fallen to him which he should be glad to turn to account — 
particularly if sure of not making too intimate an acquaintance 
with the Bosphorus in the attempt. A certain wealthy Turk 
had applied to him for assistance under very trying domestic 
circumstances. His favorite wife had lost a precious ring, 
which had doubtless been stolen either by one of his other wives, 
under the influence of jealousy, or by a female slave. Would 
the magician pay a visit to his house, recover the ring, and ex- 
pose the delinquent? "Now,^' said he, '^if I once get within 
the walls, I shall be sure to force my way on into the female 
apartments on some pretence. If I find the ring, all is well: but 
if not, this Turk will discover that I have been laughing at his 
beard. However, as he is a favorite at Court, and cannot but 
know in what flattering estimation I am held there, he will pro- 
bably treat me with the distinction I deserve. In fine, I will 
try it. Will you come too ? you can help me in my incanta- 
tions, which will make an excuse." The proposal was too 
tempting to be rejected, and at the hour agreed on we set off 
in such state as we could command (in the East, state is essen- 
tial to respect), jogging over the rough streets in one of those 
hearse-like carriages without springs, which makes one's bones 
jar against each other in a manner by no means luxurious. 

We reached at last a gate, which promised little; but ere 
long we found ourselves in one of those '' high-walled gardens, 
green and old," which are among the glories of the East. Pass- 
ing between rows of orange and lemon-trees, we reached the 
house, where we were received by a goodly retinue of slaves, 
and conducted, accompanied by our dragoman, through a long 

25* 



294 PICTURESQUE SKETCHES 

suite of apartments. In the last of them stood a tall^ handsome; 
and rather youthful man^ in splendid attire, who welcomed us 
with a grave courtesy. We took our seats, and^were presented 
in due form with long pipes, and with coffee, to me far more ac- 
ceptable. After a sufficient interval of time had passed for 
the most meditative and abstracted of men to remember his 
purpose, our host, reminded of what he had apparently forgotten 
by my companion's conjuring robes, an electrical machine, and 
other instruments of incantation, which the slaves carried from 
our carriage, civilly inquired when we intended to commence 
operations. '^What operations?" demanded my companion, 
with much apparent unconcern. '^ The discovery of the ring." 
" Whenever his Highness pleased, and it suited the female part 
of his household to make their appearance," was the answer. 

At this startling proposition even the Oriental sedateness of 
our stately host gave way, and he allowed his astonishment and 
displeasure to become visible. " Who ever heard," he demanded, 
" of the wives of a true believer being shown to a stranger, and 
that stranger an Infidel and a Frank?" As much astonished 
in our turn, we demanded, ^^ When a magician had ever been 
heard of, who could discover a stolen treasure without being 
confronted either with the person who had lost or the person 
who had appropriated it?" For at least two hours, though re- 
lieved by intervals of silence, the battle was carried on with 
much occasional vehemence on his part, and on ours with the 
assumption of perfect indifference. Our host at last, perceiving 
that our obstinacy was equal to the decrees of Fate, retired, as 
we were informed, to consult his mother on the subject. In a 
few minutes he returned, and assured us that our proposition was 
ridiculous; upon which we rose with much dignified displeasure, 
, and moved toward the door, stating that our beards had been 
A made little of A grave looking man who belonged to the house- 
hold of our host, and occupied apparently a sort of semi-ecclesi- 



OP GREECE AND TURKEY. 295 

astical position, now interposed, and after some consultation it 
was agreed that as we were not mere men, but prophets, and 
probably saints, an exception might be made in our favor without 
violation of the Mussulman law ; not, indeed, to the extent of 
allowing us to profane the inner sanctuary of the harem with 
our presence, but so far as to admit us into an apartment ad- 
joining it, where the women would be summoned to attend us. 

Accordingly, we passed through a long suite of rooms, and 
at last found ourselves in a chamber lofty and large, fanned by 
a breeze from the Bosphorus, over which its lattices were sus- 
pended, skirted by a low divan, covered with carpets and 
cushions, and " invested with purpureal gleams'^ by the splen- 
did hangings through which the light feebly strove. Among a 
confused heap of crimson pillows and orange drapery, at the 
remote end of the apartment, sat, or rather reclined, the mother 
of our reluctant host. I could observe only that she was aged, 
and lay there as still as if she had belonged to the vegetable, 
not the human world. Usually she was obscured by the 
smoke of her long pipe ; but when its wreaths chanced to jQoat 
aside or grow thin, her dark eyes were fixed upon us with an 
expression half indifferent and half averse. 

Presently a murmur of light feet was heard in an adjoining 
chamber ; on it moved along the floor of the gallery, and in 
trooped the company of wives and female slaves. They laughed 
soft and musically as they entered, but seemed frightened also ; 
and at once raising their shawls and drawing down their veils, 
they glided simultaneously into a semicircle, and stood there 
with hands folded on their breasts. I sat opposite to them, 
drinking cofiee and smoking, or pretending to smoke, a pipe 
eight feet long : at one side stood the Mollah and some male 
members of the household : at the other, stood the handsome 
husband, apparently but little contented with the course matters 
had taken ; and my friend, the magician, moved about among 



I 



296 PICTURESQUE SKETCHES 

the implements of his art clad in a black gown spangled with 
flame-colored devices, strange enough to strike a hold heart with 
awe. Beyond the semicircle stood two children, a boy and a 
girl, holding in their hands twisted rods of barley-sugar about 
a yard long each, which they sucked assiduously the whole 
time of our visit. There they stood, mute and still as statues, 
with dark eyes fixed, now on us, and now on the extremity of 
their sugar wands. 

My companion commenced operations by displaying a num- 
ber of conjuring tricks calculated to impress all present with 
the most exalted opinion of him, stopping every now and then 
to make his dragoman explain that it would prove in vain to 
endeavor to deceive a being gifted with such powers. To 
these expositions the women apparently paid but little atten- 
tion ; but the conjuring feats delighted them ; and again and 
again they laughed until literally the head of each dropped on 
her neighbor's shoulder. After a time the husband, who alone 
had never appeared the least entertained, interposed, and asked 
the conjuror whether he had yet discovered the guilty party. 
With the utmost coolness, my friend replied, " Certainly not : 
how could he while his Highness' s wives continued veiled ?" 
This new demand created new confusion and a long debate : I 
thought, however, that the women seemed rather to advocate 
our cause : the husband, the Mollah, and the mother again con- 
sulted ; and in another moment the veils had dropped, and the 
beauty of many an Eastern nation stood before us revealed. 

Four of these Oriental beauties were, as we were informed, 
wives, and six were slaves. The former were beautiful indeed, 
though beautiful in different degrees and in various styles of 
beauty ; of the latter, two only. They were, all of them, tall, 
slender, and dark-eyed, " shadowing high beauty in their airy 
brows,^^ and uniting a mystical with a luxurious expression, 
like that of Sibyls who had been feasting with Cleopatra. There 



or GREECE AND TURKEY. 297 

was something to me strange as well as lovely in tlieir aspect, 
as strange as their condition, which seems a state half-way be- 
tween marriage and widowhood. They see no man except their 
husband ; and a visit from him (except in the case of the fa- 
vorite) is a rare and marvelous occurrence, like an eclipse of the 
sun. Their bearing toward each other was that of sisters } in 
their movements I remarked an extraordinary sympathy, which 
was the more striking on account of their rapid transitions from 
the extreme of alarm to childlike wonder, and again to bound- 
less mirth. 

The favorite wife was a Circassian, and a fairer vision it 
would not be easy to see. Intellectual in expression she hardly 
could be called, and yet she was full of dignity, as well as of 
pliant grace and of sweetness. Her black eyes, beaming with 
a soft and stealthy radiance, seemed as if they would have 
yielded light in the darkness; and the heavy waves of her 
hair, which, in the excitement of the tumultuous scene, she 
carelessly flung over her shoulders, gleamed like a mirror. Her 
complexion was the most exquisite I have seen, its smooth and 
pearly purity being tinged with a color, unlike that of flower 
or of fruit, of bud or of berry, but which reminded me of the 
vivid and delicate tints which sometimes streak the interior of 
a shell. Though tall she seemed as light as if she had been 
an embodied cloud, hovering over the rich carpets like a child 
that does not feel the weight of its body; and though stately 
in the intervals of rest, her mirth was a sort of rapture. She, 
too, had that peculiar luxuriousness of aspect, in no respect op- 
posed to modesty, which belongs to the East ; around her lips 
was wreathed, in their stillness, an expression at once pleasura- 
ble and pathetic, which seemed ever ready to break forth into 
a smile : her hands seemed to leave with regret whatever they 
had rested on, and in parting to leave something behind ; and 



298 PICTURESQUE SKETCHES 

in all her soft and witching beauty she reminded me of Brown- 
ing's lines : — 

" No swan, soft woman, rubbed in lucid oils, 
The gift of an enamoured god more fair." 

As feat succeeded to feat^ and enchantment to enchantment, 
all remnant of reserve was discarded, and no trace remained of 
that commingled alarm and pleased expectation which had cha- 
racterized those beaming countenances when first they emerged 
from their veils. These fair women floated around us, and 
tossed their hands in the air, wholly forgetting that their hus- 
band was by. Still, however, we had made but little progress 
in our inquiry; and when the magician informed them that 
they had better not try to conceal anything from him, their 

1 only answer was a look that said, " You came here to give us 
pleasure, not to cross-question us." Resolved to use more 
formidable weapons, he began to arrange an electrical machine, 
when the MoUah, after glancing at it two or three times, ap- 
proached and asked him whether that instrument also was 
supernatural. The quick-witted Frenchman replied at once, 
" By no means ; it is a mere scientific toy." Then, turning to 
me, added, in a low voice, " He has seen it before — probably, 
he has traveled." In a few minutes, the women were ranged 
in a ring, and linked hand in hand. He then informed them 
through our interpreter, that if a discovery was not immediately 
made, each person should receive, at the same moment, a blow 
from an invisible hand; that, the second time, the admonition 

I would be severer still ; and that, the third time, if his warning 
was still despised, the culprit would drop down dead. This 
announcement was heard with much gravity, but no confession 
followed it : the shock was given, and the lovely circle was 
speedily dislinked, '^ with shrieks and laughter." Again the 
shock was given, and with the same effect ; but this time the 



OP QREECE AND TURKEY. 299 

laughter was more subdued. Before making his last essay, the 
magician addressed them in a long speech, telling them that 
he had already discovered the secret ; that if the culprit con- 
fessed, he would make intercession for her, but that if she did 
not, she must take the consequences. Still no confession was 
made. For the first time, my confident friend looked downcast. 
'^ It will not do,^' he said to me; "the ring cannot be recovered : 
they know nothing about it : probably it was lost. We cannot 
fulfil our engagement; and indeed, I wish," he added, "that 
we were well out of all this." 

I confess I wished the same, especially when I glanced at 
the master of the household, who stood apart, gloomy as a 
thunder-cloud, and with the look of a man who thinks himself 
in a decidedly false position. The Easterns do not understand 
a jest, especially in a harem; and not being addicted to irony 
(that great safety-valve for enthusiasm), they pass rapidly from 
immovability to very significant and sometimes disagreeable 
action. Speaking little, they deliver their souls by acting. I 
should have been glad to hear our host talk, even though in a 
stormy voice ; on the whole, however, I trusted much to the 
self-possession and address of my associate. Nor was I deceived. 
" Do as you see me do," he said to me and the dragoman ; 
and then, immediately after giving the third shock, which was 
as ineffectual as those that preceded it, he advanced to our grim 
host with a face radiant with satisfaction, and congratulated 
him vehemently. "You are a happy man," he said. "Your 
household has not a flaw in it. Fortunate it was that you sent 
for the wise man : I have discovered the matter." " What 
have you discovered ?" " The fate of the ring. It has never 
been stolen : if it had, I would have speedily restored it. Fear 
nothing ; your household is trustworthy and virtuous. I know 
where the ring is, but I should deceive you if I bade you hope 
ever to see it again. This is a great mystery, and the happy 



800 PICTURESQUE SKETCHES 

consummation surpasses even my hopes. Adieu. The matter 
has turned out just as you see. You were born under a lucky 
star. Happy is the man whose household is trustworthy, and 
who, when his faith is tried, finds a faithful counselor. I 
forbid you henceforth and for ever to distrust any one of your 
wives.^^ 

It would be impossible to describe the countenance of our 
Mussulman friend during this harangue. There he stood, like 
a tree half in sunshine and half in shade ; gratification struggling 
with displeasure in his countenance, and wonder eclipsing both. 
It was not by any means our policy to wait until he had 
adjusted the balance, and made up his mind as to the exact 
degree of gratitude he owed his guests. On, accordingly, we 
passed to the door. In a moment the instinct of courtesy 
prevailed, and our host made a sign to one of his retinue. His 
slaves preceded us with torches (it had grown late, and accom- 
panied by half the household, as a guard of honor, we again 
traversed the large and straggling house, passed through the 
garden, and entered the carriage which waited for us beyond 
the wall. Our evening passed rapidly away as we discussed 
our adventure; and I have more than once thought, with 
pleasure, how amusing an incident the visit of the strangers 
must have been to the secluded beauties. No doubt the baths 
of Constantinople have rung with many a merry laugh occa- 
sioned by the adventure with the Franks. Never, perhaps, 
have the inmates of a harem seen so much of the infidel before, 
and conversed with him so familiarly, in the presence of their 
husband. 



OF GREECE AND TURKEV. 801 



CHAPTER XXII. 

ANCIENT AND MODERN CONSTANTINOPLE. 

Defect of Constantinople as a residence — Its social character repulsive 
of western sympathies — Its rehgious and domestic institutes — Its 
political character — Analogy between the Turkish empire and the 
Greek empire — -Principles of government common to both — Character 
of the social state built up by Constantine — Its absence of simplicity 
— Of personal greatness — Of hereditary honors — Its dependence on 
despotism and intrigue — Ancient remains at Constantinople — The 
" Burned Pillar" — The Atmeidan — The obelisk of Theodosius — The 
monument of Constantine — The Delphic serpents — The ancient 
Hippodrome — The column of Marcian — Palace of Belisarius — Sub- 
terranean cisterns — The " Seven Towers." 

There is one source of interest of which the traveler is 
almost wholly deprived at Constantinople, and at Constantinople 
alone of European capitals — that of society, considered in its 
moral and human relations. To the senses indeed, and to the 
intellect of an inquirer, the social condition of Constantinople 
presents abundant materials; but to the sympathies it is all but 
barren. A diversity between the customs and manners of a 
foreign country and of our own tends naturally to excite, not to 
repress, interest, if that diversity be not too great; but where, 
in addition to usages the most remote from ours, and aspirations 
antagonistic, a^ well as a different language and race, we are 
opposed also by that gulf which separates the Oriental from the 
"Western, and the Mahometan from the Christian, the affections 
can find no grappling points, and the stranger, a stranger still, 
26 



302 PICTURESQUE SKETCHES 

however long his sojourn, is thrown upon nature for companion- 
ship, and on his own thoughts for friends. Every other 
country in Europe — Italy, G-ermany, France, seems a part of 
your home, when your memory strays to it from the city of 
mosques, and baths, and tombs. It is not merely on account 
of its surpassing visual beauty that at Constantinople you live 
in a world of surfaces not of substance. The temple, in which 
the worship of God is blended with that of the Arabian 
Prophet, is to you as you pass it, no temple. No altar conse- 
crates it f neither sacrament, nor creed, nor hymn makes it holy. 
Even the domestic household^ if you chance to penetrate its 
jealous gate, says nothing to you of home. The institute of 
slavery and the plurality of wives cut it off and excommunicate 
it from all associations that hover about the hearth, and you 
gaze on it with an eye of curiosity alone, as you study the 
economy of the ant-hill. It is the same in the more complex 
relations of social and political life. The institutions which 
have necessarily gathered themselves around the faith of the 
Prophet and the custom of polygamy are such as shut them out 
from the sympathies of a son of the West, however regardless 
he may be of that religion to which almost all that his country 
most values, owes its existence. The social life around him is 
a vision as bright as the blue sea that bathes the seven-hilled 
city, but the moment he dips his hand beneath the surface he 
is repelled by the chill. Only in the cemetery is he at home, 
and the cypress and the tended grave speak to him of a fraternal 
humanity. 

This alienation is no doubt increased by the absence of all 
that is great in the political condition of Turkey. The religious 
ardor which once animated the Turkish race having died away, 
nothing else remains as a substitute for it. There is nothing 
in its institutions on which the mind can dwell with satisfac- 
tion; nothing in its past history on which the memory can find 



OF GREECE AND TURKEY. 303 

repose ; nothing in its prospects wliicli offers a field to hope. 
Its polity, durable as it has proved, is yet but a long-lived 
accident ; we feel that it does not grow legitimately out of the 
nature of man, and that to that nature it permits no genuine 
development. Human virtue there lacks a sphere, and the 
noblest faculties are left without employment. Corruption and 
intrigue set in motion the springs of political action, while 
fatalism and indolence stand in the place of content, and in the 
way of improvement. Progress there is none, nor can the 
stranger have faith in the destinies of a race which has ceased 
to have faith in itself. Repulsed by the present, we take refuge 
in the past; but that past reminds us of a great stain which has 
never been wiped out, a blot on the escutcheon of Christendom. 
The radiant vision rests on a foundation not its own. The 
outside of the platter is made clean, and the sepulchre is 
whitened, but the inside is full of shameful memorials. It is 
the great Christian capital, which has become the prey of the 
Infidel, and the Sultan domineers in the throne of the Caesars. 
Amid the graves of martyrs, whose graves are known no more, 
it is impossible not to feel the past a mystery, and the present 
a dream. 

Lamentable as it is to reflect on that change which has sub- 
stituted the crescent for the cross at Constantinople, it is impos- 
sible not to remember, that that metropolis, even in its earliest 
and most vigorous days, was, in name alone, a second Rome ; 
that in its institutions, manners, and morals, it bore from the 
first almost as close an analogy to eastern as to western monar- 
chies ; and that in its earliest histary we can find, too often, a 
parallel to those deeds of darkness and of blood which disgrace 
the Turkish annals. The jealousy of Roxalana did not exercise 
a more fatal influence over the children of Solyman than did 
that of Fausta, the second wife of Constantino, over her step- 
son, Crispus, condemned at her instance by his own father, and 



804 PICTURESQUE SKETCHES 

sent without a trial from Rome to Pola^ where the secret edict 
for his death was carried into execution. The massacre of so 
many members of his father's family carried out by Constantius, 
within a few days of Constantine's death, an enormity which 
resulted in the speedy extinction of the Imperial House, was 
certainly never surpassed in atrocity by the crime of a sultan 
too jealous to bear " a brother near his throne I" The massacre 
of the Janissaries is among us reckoned a somewhat strong 
illustration of state policy in the East; yet what was it when 
compared with that of the Gothic youth in the year A. D. 378. 
After the death of Yalens, the sons of the Goths had been dis- 
tributed among the various cities of the East. In a few years 
their numbers had become formidable; the fame of the Gothic 
war had reached their ears, and their high qualities as well as 
growing attainments rendered them objects of imperial jealousy. 
How was the possible danger averted ? A day was solemnly 
set apart, on which these guests of the empire were to assemble 
in the capital cities of their respective provinces for the purpose, 
as they were informed, of receiving a gift of land and money 
sufficient for their future support. Unarmed and without sus- 
picion the devoted victims congregated together in the forum of 
the chief cities; in another moment the adjoining streets were 
blocked up with soldiers ; the roofs of the houses suddenly grew 
populous with archers and slingers ; the signal was given, and 
an indiscriminate slaughter was carried on at once in every part 
of the eastern provinces. These crimes, the scandal of the 
earlier annals of the empire, were but omens of those by which 
its later history was clouded. It is impossible, on reading of 
such events, to withstand the inference that the Turkish rule 
was not wholly incongruous with that which it superseded. 
This circumstance was, perhaps, the secret of its success. 
When ancient thrones are subverted, the tame submission of 
the vanquished is not more often to be accounted for by their 



OF GREECE AND TURKEY. 305 

weakness than by the fact that their position is less changed 
than it seems, and that their new rulers, judged by their acts, 
appear to them but the legitimate successors of the old. 

From the very beginning, the Roman Empire founded at 
Constantinople included more of the east than of the west in its 
political and social system. Men are frequently conquered by 
their own successes, and the genius of a land reduced takes 
possession of those who wield its sceptre. Constantino, like 
Alexander, had become an Oriental, and the splendor of dress, 
as well as pomp and pageantry, which he affected, was such, as 
a Trajan would have despised. The same character stumped 
itself upon the institutions he bequeathed. This was, perhaps, 
unavoidable. The character of the social structure was in part 
determined by the soft and friable material which alone was at 
his command. Constantino was obliged to people his new capi- 
tal with the dregs of the Greek and the Latin civilization, both 
of them effete. Beside the old inhabitants of Byzantium, and 
the wealthy lords of the neighboring provinces, he attracted to 
his new palaces by the bribe of the alienated demesnes of Pon- 
tus and Asia, a multitude of the corrupt senators of E-ome, as 
well as the greediest or the most indigent of the equestrian 
order. The new empire thus had no youth. It began with, 
decrepitude, and its earliest institutions were such as make 
national senility respectable, rather than those which breed up 
strength in virtue and wisdom. 

It may be doubted, indeed, whether even the social system 
at present prevailing in Constantinople is much more remote 
from that which existed at Home during the sounder period of 
the empire, than was that artificial and conventional fabric of 
society built up by Constantino. In his time, and in that of 
his immediate successors, the history of the empire was often 
little more than the dreary and shameful record of the intrigues 
of the palace. Then, as now, the fame and the safety of a re- 

26* 



306 PICTURESQUE SKETCHES 

mote governor was liable at any time to melt away before the 
whisper of a cbamberlain. Slaves as vile as those who now 
guard the recesses of the seraglio determined the fortunes of 
distinct provinces ; and successful warriors^ aged statesmen^ and 
men of proconsular dignity, found themselves ensnared in a 
common network of intrigue, and trembled at the consequences 
of their imprudence if they had failed to propitiate any one of 
that countless host of spies with which the whole empire was 
infested. Society also at Constantinople, was from the begin- 
ning, utterly destitute of that manly simplicity which Rome, 
even in its decline, partially, at least, preserved among its 
traditions. Vanity and display ruled without a mask ; and 
eminence of station was no longer, even in name, connected 
with personal merits. The subordination of ranks, as complex 
and minute as it was unmeaning and arbitrary, rested upon no 
moral foundation of service done or protection afforded. The 
mere ceremonial connected with it was such as it took a life to 
learn ; and when the lesson had been acquired, the whole life 
of man became but the perpetual rehearsal of the same dull 
pantomime in a theatre, rich only in ill-sorted frippery and faded 
gold. The first and noblest form of greatness, that which rests 
on personal merit, had passed away : that which borders most 
closely upon and most palpably represents it — hereditary great- 
ness, preserved but a shadowy existence : official rank had pushed 
itself into the place of both and superseded both : a nod conferred 
nobility, and the reflection of an imperial smile gilded the new 
patent. The patricians of Constantine were but tenants for life of 
their honors. Such titles as would have been rejected with equal 
scorn by the " Conscript fathers'' of ancient Rome, and by her 
heroes — ^^ your Gravity ^^ " your Magnitude/' and " your High- 
ness," were carefully discriminated in all their ascending and 
descending grades, and became the rewards of men unknown 
in the battle-field or the senate, but familiar with the backstairs 



OF GREECE AND TURKEY. 307 

of a favorite's office; and great enough to enter the palace by 
its smallest door. 

Such was the far-famed ^'Hierarchy of the State." Was its 
tinsel, after all, much superior to the honest trinketry of the 
bazaar ? In such a state of things Constantinople must have 
been almost as incapable as it now is of producing families, 
which, like the many illustrious races of ancient Rome, gave a 
meaning to nobility, and entwined their honors round the solid 
fabric of the institutions which their virtue and their wisdom 
had defended. Then, as now, absolutism could have been no 
accident, though the fate of successive dynasties, unloved and 
unlamented, may have been determined by chance. Despotic 
power was necessarily the refuge of a people too light to sustain 
the weight of liberty — a people without sufficient elevation 
seriously to desire it, and without the courage and self-control 
required for its use. Such power they needed, not to lift up 
the majesty of an embodied nation, but to protect the feasts and 
the sports of a gregarious herd intent upon pleasure. Then, as 
now, such a power was a thing demanded by the weaknesses and 
vices of the time ; and then, as now, it governed by the weapons 
it found — corruption and fear ; and in so governing it manifest- 
ed itself as the true exponent of the people ruled. 

The remains of ancient buildings at Constantinople are but 
few and inconsiderable. Of these, one of the principal is known 
by the name of the " Burned Pillar.^' It occupies the centre 
of that space on the second hill which Constantino set apart for 
the forum, in commemoration of the fact that he bad pitched 
his camp there during the siege of Byzantium. This column 
was originally composed of ten immense blocks of porphyry, 
measuring each of them about ten feet in height and thirty-three 
in circumference, and supported on a pedestal of white marble 
twenty feet high. It was surmounted by a colossal statue of 
bronze, brought from Phrygia, or, as some maintained, from 



308 PICTURESQUE SKETCHES 

Athens, and supposed to have been the work of Phidias. This 
statue, which bore on its brows a crown of rays, and sustained 
a sceptre in one hand and the globe in the other, was originally 
a representation of Apollo, but through lapse of time had under- 
gone a metamorphosis from which in servile or in superstitious 
times statues are by no means exempt, and bore the name of 
Constantine. The pillar has been much injured by fire; and 
its dark and rifted masses are now only held together by the 
aid of iron girdles and cramps. Few remains, beside, of Con- 
stantino's forum continue to exist; and we look in vain for the 
triumphal arches that once occupied its opposite ends, the stately 
porticoes which enclosed it laterally, and the countless statues 
which stood between the pillars. 

In the circus or hippodrome, which, under its modern name 
of Atmeidan, still preserves its ancient destination, and is at 
this day used as a place of exercise for horses, there remain 
several important monuments of antiquity. One of these is the 
obelisk of Theodosius, a slender mass of red Egyptian granite, 
about sixty feet in height, inscribed with hieroglyphics, and 
resting on a pedestal of marble, the sides of which are adorned 
with the triumphs of that emperor, poorly sculptured in alto 
relievo. Not far off is the monument of Constantine, rising to 
the height of ninety feet, and constructed of masonry so coarse, 
that, now that the plates of iron which once shielded it are re- 
moved, the rough stones which compose it seem bound together 
by but a precarious bond. In the Atmeidan we meet another 
and yet more interesting relic — a brazen pillar, consisting of 
three serpents twisted into each other. Mahomet, as he rode 
in triumph to St. Sophia's, observed this remarkable monument, 
and raising his battle-axe as he passed, smote ofi", if the legend 
be worthy of credit, the lower jaw of one of the serpents. This 
brazen sisterhood was originally found in the camp of Xerxes 
after the defeat of the Persians, and, with other precious spoils, 



OF GREECE AND TURKEY. 309 

was transferred to Delphi, where its triple head supported a 
golden tripod, the votive offering of the victorious Greeks. 
From Delphi the serpents were transferred by Constantino to 
his new capital ; and have, therefore, seen nearly as much of the 
world as the brazen horses of Praxiteles, which, taken originally 
from Constantinople to Venice, have again, after a sojourn of a 
few years in Paris, made half of their journey home, and. taken 
up their resting place once more over the porches of St. MarFs. 
The ancient hippodrome was the scene of one of the most 
important ceremonies which, for successive centuries, Constan- 
tinople witnessed. Round it, year after year, as the birthday 
of the imperial city recurred, the golden statue of the founder, 
bearing in one hand an image emblematic of that city, was car- 
ried in a triumphal car, attended by a long train of guards in 
splendid apparel, and of acolytes bearing lighted tapers. The 
procession halted for a few minutes opposite the throne of the 
reigning emperor, who, advancing and kneeling before it, wor- 
shiped the memory of the founder of the second Rome. From 
this throne the emperors witnessed also the Circensian games; 
but no remains exist of the marble stairs which wound in long 
descent from the circus to the imperial palace beside the sea. 
As vainly do we look for the countless public buildings which 
rendered the ancient Constantinople the wonder of the world — 
baths, schools of learning, porticoes, granaries, halls of justice, 
churches, and private palaces. A single aqueduct, indeed, re- 
mains, and, connecting hill with hill, adds to the landscape that 
peculiar grace which the shape of the arch invariably confers. 
Near the gate of Adrianople, and in the garden of a Turkish 
house, stands the column of Marcian. It is about eighty feet 
in height, and its capital is quaintly supported on its several 
sides by the expanded wings of four eagles in relievo. The 
building which bears the name of the Palace of Belisarius is a 
vast, half-ruinous pile, occupied by a squalid colony of Jews, 



310 PICTURESQUE SKETCHES 

the poorest and most beggarly in Constantinople, and retains 
little to interest tlie traveler except one gateway, and some strag- 
gling outworks of considerable strength. 

Among the ancient remains of Constantinople, there is one 
class peculiar to that city, and of which the original destination 
is a problem not easily solved by the philosophic inquirer. In 
various parts of the city we discover vast subterranean retreats, 
supported by countless pillars, whose strangely carved capitals, 
fantastically wreathed with animal forms, as well as imitations 
of flowers and fruit, glimmer in a dim twilight, to which a 
green tinge is given by those fissures in the weedy roof, through 
which the sunbeams find access. These subterranean retreats, 
as is generally supposed, were constructed for the purpose of 
supplying the city with water during the hot season, and, in 
most instances, the mighty cisterns are still flooded. One of 
them, however, called by the Turks " Bin-Yebir-Direg," is now 
dried up, and is therefore, more easily visited than the rest. ■ 
Its roof rests upon more than three hundred massive columns, 
which, however, have lost about a third of their height, in con- 
sequence of a mass of rubbish, supposed to have been that dug 
up when the foundations of St. Sophia were excavated, having 
been thrown into the dried-up reservoir. This gloomy retreat 
has been taken possession of by a sort of gipsy colony, which 
gathers around the visitant from the upper world with ceaseless 
questions and clamorous demands. 

The most important of these subterranean abodes is that 
which bears the Turkish name of " Y^re-Batan-Serai,'' and the 
limits of which have never been ascertained. The water-courses 
which wind, like veins, through the heart of the hills, expand in 
this mysterious region into a vast and dreary lake, black as the 
Stygian stream itself. As your guide waves his torch above 
the sluggish pool, all that you can see is an endless labyrinth 



OP GREECE AND TURKEY. 311 

of pillars, about a dozen feet apart from eacli other, and a wilder- 
ness of vaulted roofs supported on their broad and half sub- 
merged trunks. Several attempts have been made to explore 
the limits of this city beneath a city, but hitherto without suc- 
cess. In various quarters of Constantinople portions of its roof 
have fallen in, owing to the failure of the pillars that support 
it; and some are bold enough to assert that the watery crypt 
extends four miles beneath the sunny region of domes, mina- 
rets, and gardens. A record is still preserved of an English 
explorer, bolder than the rest, who, many years ago, launched 
a boat on the water, in defiance of counsel and protest, for the 
purpose of ascertaining its limits, and was never heard of again. 
It is supposed that, having lost his way, he continued to ad- 
vance until his lamp burned out, and perished at last of hunger, 
with no other sound in his ears than the sighs of the boatman 
whom he had induced to accompany him, and the lapping of 
the wave against column and arch. 

The far-famed prison of the " Seven Towers'' is rapidly fall- 
ing into ruin, although a portion of it is still inhabited by the 
chief officers of the Constantinopolitan garrison. Four of the 
towers have already taken their portion among the things that 
were, and those which remain no longer preserve their original 
destination. The names of various portions of the building are 
significant memorials of the scenes which it once witnessed ; 
and the traveler who visits the ^^ Place of Heads,'' and bends 
over the " Well of Blood" may well be tempted — if not a Turk 
— to think that the revolutions of time have not been wholly 
for the worse. Changed, indeed, are the times since the day 
when the representatives of all the Christian powers were com- 
mitted to that gloomy abode. More than once a Kussian am- 
bassador had to expiate in its vaults the errors of Muscovite 
diplomacy. Doubtless the world has advanced much since then 



312 PICTURESQUE SKETCHES 

in civilization : yet it may be doubted wliether in those earlier 
days a company of helpless nuns would^ even in Russia, have 
been repeatedly flogged, and tortured almost to death, because 
they refused to renounce their faith. In Turkey they would at 
present find themselves comparatively safe . 



OP GREECE AND TURKEY. 313 



CHAPTER XXIII. 

THE WALLS OF CONSTANTINOPLE. 

Sight-seeing — The " dancing dervises"- — Turkish bathing — Real objects 
of interest at Constantinople — The ancient walls — The Armenian 
cemetery — The walls of an ancient metropolis — Its visible history — 
The destinies of Constantinople determined by its site — Monumental 
philosophy. 

I MUST own that while at Constantinople I felt but very little 
zeal for what is technically called ^^sight-seeing/' as distin- 
guished from seeing what is beautiful, or what, from its asso- 
ciations, becomes impressive. The mere oddities and eccen- 
tricities of street life in no part of the world are worth a very 
careful examination, and still less deserve a minute description, 
although in too many a book of travels some twenty or thirty 
pages are frequently devoted to an elaborate account of some 
trifle not more dignified than our Punch, or the athletic feats 
of our mountebanks. If things which we should pass in our 
own villages without casting a second glance at them are to 
rivet our attention, merely because they belong to a remote 
part of the world, the traveler will meet enough and to spare 
of such ; but his most careful descriptions will probably convey 
a much more vivid than accurate notion of what amused him 
at the moment. Among the sights at Constantinople, which 
the traveler is most earnestly recommended to see, is the 
^Mancing dervises.^' It may be worth witnessing once; but 
few, I should think, would care to pay it a second visit. 
27 



314 PICTURESQUE SKETCHES 

This singular ceremonial takes place in a college of dervises 
within the region of Gralata, and is open to the inspection of 
any one who does not object to discard his shoes and substitute 
for them a pair of slippers, with which he is speedily provided. 
The chapel is a small octagon building, part of which is railed 
off for the religious exercises of the brethren, while another 
portion of it is devoted to the use of strangers. The inclosed 
space was empty when I arrived. In a few minutes the der- 
vises entered, wrapped in long dark cloaks with flowing sleeves, 
and bearing on their heads that high and tapering gray hat 
which marks their community. Bending gradually as they 
advanced, and kneeling till their foreheads touched the ground, 
they remained for some time absorbed in prayer. Again they 
bowed profoundly to their superior, an old man who stood in 
the centre of the circle, clothed in an ample pelisse of green silk 
and fur, and then took their stations around him, with their 
hands folded on their breasts, their eyes closed, and their faces, 
dim and abstracted, inclined gently forward. 

From a gallery in the upper part of the building musical 
sounds were heard ere long, to which the dervises added their 
voices. To me nothing could be much more harsh and grating 
than such music, but over those who joined in it the efiects 
which it exercised seemed magical. Gradually a deep enthu- 
siasm appeared to fall on them, and that peculiar species of 
rotatory movement, improperly termed dancing, commenced. 
Slowly, at first, they spun round, each revolving on his axis, 
and all preserving exactly the same relative position as they 
circled round and round the enclosure. During these extraor- 
dinary evolutions they extended their arms at each side, while 
their long and loose robes, gray, green, and brown, spreading 
out on all sides, as their gyrations became more rapid, imparted 
to their figures a pyramidal outline of which their sharp hats 
formed the apex. This mystical dance continued for the space 



OF GREECE AND TURKEY. 315 

of about five minutes, wheiij ceasing it in a moment, and simul- 
taneously, they stood still once more, each with his hands on 
his breast, and his face towards his superior. After an interval 
of prayer the same ceremonial was gone through a second and 
a third time. There is something remarkable in the perfect 
regularity of the movement, and yet more so in the contrast 
between the extreme velocity which it reaches and the stillness 
of those pale, absorbed countenances, slightly inclined toward 
the right shoulder, and calm as in a dream. Such spectacles, 
however, are rendered utterly unsatisfactory by that impossi- 
bility of appreciating their real import under which a stranger 
labors. It is difficult for us to realize in this strange exhibi- 
tion anything more than an unmeaning, and, as it strikes some, 
a ridiculous ceremonial. On the other hand, we know that the 
eastern nations have, from the earliest periods, associated 
dancing, as we associate music, with religious aspiration, and 
that it is as impossible for us to ascertain what that dance may 
express to them as it would be for a spectator without an ear 
to appreciate our cathedral service. On such occasions those 
who stand without can know little of what is going on within ; 
he sees but the wrong side of the tapestry, and need not wonder 
if he finds more loose ends to pluck at than harmonized hues 
to admire. 

Among the "sights" of Constantinople there is none that 
makes a stranger open his eyes more widely than that of those 
vast establishments, the public baths. You would hardly, 
however, thank me for adding one more description of them to 
those which abound in every book of eastern travel, from the 
days of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu to our own. I have 
never caught the enthusiasm which some profess for eastern 
bathing. A bath is surely not one of the social pleasures; and 
the "delicious languor'^ which is described as following a 
Turkish bath can hardly be consistent with the presence of 



316 PICTURESQUE SKETCHES 

some hundreds of people clattering past you on a marble floor. 
A plunge into the sea is, to me, infinitely more exciting at once 
and tranquilizing; nor can I believe that, either for health or 
cleanliness, it is necessary to allow oneself to be kneaded like 
dough, pummeled like a feather-bed, or scoured like the bars 
of a grate. 

It is not in the midst of such scenes that the traveler finds 
a satisfactory answer to the question, " Why did I come all the 
way to Constantinople ?'' nor is it with such images that he 
should store his mind, if he wishes to enjoy his travel again in 
recollection. The quaint, the strange, the fantastically bril- 
liant — such objects but flit across the fancy like the shapes 
flung upon the wall by a magic lantern. The pictures which 
imprint themselves on the mind permanently, and which exer- 
cise an elevating or restorative influence there, are those alone 
cast upon its miiror by the beautiful and the true. The ob- 
jects to which a stranger should direct his attention at Con- 
stantinople are few; but those objects cannot be studied too 
carefully. Weeks and months might pass away before the 
glory of that spectacle — the citied hills, the cypressed vales, 
the mountains, the luminous sea, and purple sky, had been duly 
appreciated. That lesson learned, the sojourner at Constan- 
tinople will, perhaps, do best to turn from the present to the 
past, and endeavor to realize in his imagination but a few of 
those marvelous events which were witnessed in successive ages 
by generations occupying the ground on which he stands — 
those threatening and perplexing meteors which history 
launched successively across the calm firmament of nature and 
daily life. He is almost driven to the society of past times by 
the isolation in which he finds himself. What surrounds him 
excites his admiration or his wonder; but it is when he con- 
fronts the few monuments of ages gone by at Constantinople, 



OF GREECE AND TURKEY. 317 

that his affections find a resting-place, and that the visible 
scene acquires a moral significance. 

Of all those monuments, the most interesting by far are its 
ancient walls. Following the line of the city as it rises on the 
one side from the Sea of Marmora, and from the Grolden Horn 
on the other, they connect its extreme points by a chain of 
towers, which, guarding Constantinople on the land side, en- 
closes with a stony belt the whole of that seven-hilled peninsula 
on which Constantinople stands, and of which the ancient 
Byzantium once occupied the apex. That portion of the walls 
which skirts the harbor is less perfectly seen than the rest in 
consequence of the intrusion of houses, by which too often its 
continuity is destroyed. The wall to the south, or that which 
fronts the sea, has perhaps suffered less than the rest; and as 
the stranger inspects it his eye is frequently arrested by a 
mouldering bas-relief, a broken statue, or an inscription half 
veiled by wall-flower and ivy tendrils. 

It is, however, on the land side, that the defences of Con- 
stantinople are seen to their utmost advantage. Along the 
greater part of that line runs a double wall, separated by a 
wide space, and beyond the outer of which a deep ditch extends. 
In some places those walls are nearly perfect; in others time 
has dealt severely with them, but mercifully with their ruins; 
and nature, reclaiming her own, slowly resumes their mighty 
fragments into her breast, or clothes them with blooming 
thickets, over which the bramble creeps, and in which the bird 
sings. In one spot these walls constitute a perfect fortification; 
in another they look almost like a quarry. Here their sole 
covering consists of wide, smooth masses of ivy, shivering and 
shadowing in the gust : there a woodland copse, red with berry 
and bud, nods from the bastion, or crowns the mouldering 
tower. In many places the wall is weather-stained like a sea 
cliff; and in every crevice large enough to catch a wandering 

27* 



318 PICTURESQUE SKETCHES 

seed the juniper maintains its footing, or the feathery tamarisk 
braves the wintry blast. In others they are almost bare, and 
their gray expanse, over which the long green lizard runs, shines 
baldly in the sun. In a secluded spot a cypress wood rises 
along the green steep between the two walls, and spreads far 
beyond the outer one. In its shadow the Armenians have 
made their cemetery. That mournful region is perhaps the 
least lonely part of the ancient fortifications. There, beside a 
new-made grave, a veiled and silent woman meets the traveler's 
gaze, sitting hour after hour, like one who waits beside a gate 
which will be opened to her at last. She is seen by him as he 
rides out at noon, and seen again on his return. There also 
the Armenian who has lost no friend, but possesses no country, 
sometimes makes his retreat in the stranger's land, and muses 
on his native mountains far away, bathing his memories in the 
cold and gloomy waters of the remote lake Yau, His recollec- 
tions of country and of race must lose whatever of bitterness 
may attach to them elsewhere in the presence of those walls 
which report the adversities of fourteen hundred years, and 
constitute an empire's monument, - 

If the internal monuments of a metropolitan city, when 
regarded by a meditative eye, and considered, each with refer- 
ence to the circumstances which called it into existence, express 
its moral character, and constitute a visible embodiment of its 
social progress, the external walls which guard them, battered 
and bruised by the calamities of many centuries, bring yet 
more vividly before us in review the political history of a peo- 
ple, considered in its foreign relations, and as moulded by 
outward accidents. Who is there that has not sat beneath the 
crumbling walls of a mighty city, and mused over all that, had 
they a voice, they might reveal ? It has been said, that if any 
spot of the inhabited globe could but disclose all that it has 
witnessed in the lapse of years, a moral, deep and sad, would 



OF GREECE AND TURKEY. 319 

close the tale. What lessons, then, might we not learn re- 
specting man and his fortunes; the heroism that attends his 
efforts, and the reverses that punish his pride ; if from their 
cloistral seclusion of ivy and of weeds, the walls of a mighty 
city might speak to us of what they have witnessed ! What 
would they not report of the high hopes which swelled the 
breasts of their founders! How often did not an exulting 
people cluster upon their topmost pinnacles and towers, to 
witness the return of a victorious army from its mission of 
peril and of triumph; and with what echoes were not their 
buttresses shaken when first the clarion was pealed in the dis- 
tance, and standards began to shine through the dust and the 
sunset mist ! And how fared it with the children of those 
exulting hosts, when the same walls first beheld the advance 
of a hostile host, or when, after rejecting many a haughty foe, 
the fatal hour had sounded, and the mighty bulwarks tottered 
to their fall? 

If such thoughts rise within us, as we loiter beneath the 
walls of other cities, visiting us but as transient guests, and 
leaving us almost without an adieu, they remain with the so- 
journer at Constantinople, domiciled in the region of home 
fancies and habitual meditations. No other city, it is probable, 
not even Rome, has witnessed anything approaching to the num- 
ber of great vicissitudes with which Constantinople has been 
assailed. Such was the inevitable consequence of the magnifi- 
cent position which she occupies, commanding as she does the 
keys of the east and west. Whatever race may dominate in 
Constantinople, the eyes of the world will ever be fixed upon 
it; and so long as the rulers of the earth contend for power, 
they will ever aspire to plant their banners beside the Bos- 
phorus. Constantino had originally fixed upon the plain of 
Troy as the site of his eastern metropolis ; nor did he desist 
from his enterprise until his new walls had in many places 
risen high enough above the sod to be seen by the distant 



820 PICTURESQUE SKETCHES 

mariner. Had his work proceeded^ the city which was des- 
tined to bear his name would have escaped half its calamities, 
but lost more than half its historic fame. 

Again and again, as I wandered beneath those venerable 
walls, the wonderful events which they had witnessed during 
the most important period of the world's history rose up before 
me, till Time seemed to drop its veil, as in the world of space 
distance disappears before the power of the optic glass. The 
drowning man is said to pass the whole of his life in review 
during the last few moments of it. If a kindred power were 
imparted to dying communities what a forcible and pathetic 
moral would not rise up and detach itself from naked facts, 
suddenly divested of those petty details which at other times 
obscure them ! The history of the world, if it could be written 
truthfully and with reference only to facts really essential, and 
interests into which no illusion enters, would perhaps form a 
briefer book than the court annals of many a dissolute reign. 
The true history of a nation is proportionately brief ; and the his- 
torian wanders far in disquisition, description, and speculation, 
only because, without the aid of an inspired eye, it is impossi- 
ble for him to discover the clue that guides through the laby- 
rinth, or to keep his feet upon the narrow path of moral truth. 
A large part of that moral truth will, however, be significantly 
revealed, by the surviving monuments of a nation, and this 
department of hieroglyphic interpretation is not beyond the 
range of human faculties. In the scarred and rifted walls of 
Constantinople the traveler finds abundant traces of the chisel 
wielded by that Providence, " which shapes our ends, rough- 
hew them as we may." In them the history of half the 
world has been written with an iron pen. It will not be time 
thrown away, if we cast back a traveler's brief glance upon 
the fortunes of that great city which has known most of For- 
tune's favors and of her despite ; and in whose destinies, not 
yet fully accomplished, those of our race are involved. 



OF GREECE AND TURKEY. 321 



CHAPTER XXiy. 

THE WALLS AND THEIR MEMORIES. 

The vision of Constantine — The foundation of the city — Its fortunes- — 
Beleaguered by the Goths, A. D. 378 — By the Bulgarians, A. D, 559 — 
By the Persians and Avars, A. D. 626 — By the Arabs, A. D, 668, and 
A. D. 718— By the Russians, A.D. 865, A. D. 904, A.D. 941, A. D. 1043 
— Insulted by the Norman fleet, A. D. 1146 — Besieged and taken by 
the Crusaders, A. D. 1203 — Second siege by the Latins, A. D. 1204 — 
Surprised and captured by Alexius, A. D. 1261 — By John Cantacuzene, 
A. D. 1347 — Final destruction of the Greek Empire, A. D. 1453 — Its 
destruction in part occasioned by the schism of the East and West — 
Neutrality of the Western Povs^ers — Heroic resistance and death of 
Constantine Palaeologus. 

The future greatness of the new capital of the Empire was 
revealed prophetically to Constantine, or was at least confi- 
dently foreseen by him, if we are to place credence in that vi- 
sion which encouraged him to undertake the enterprise. Within 
the walls of the ancient Byzantium he meditated on the pros- 
pects of the Empire, then distracted and exhausted. At night 
a vision appeared to him in his sleep. The genius of the city 
stood before him, venerable in aspect and full of matronly dig- 
nity, but worn with sorrow and depressed beneath the weight 
of years. Obeying a secret impulse, he surmounted her faded 
brow with the Imperial Crown; and the matron was trans- 
formed into a virgin form, beautiful and warlike as Pallas. 
Constantine accepted the omen, and resolved that the city, 
founded nearly a thousand years before by the Greek navigator, 



822 PICTURESQUE SKETCHES 

Byzas, the position of whicli had been selected with the usual 
discrimination of the Grreeks, should become the site of his new 
metropolis. Within a few days after^ he commenced the work, 
A.D. 324; and that on a scale which excited the amazement of 
those who witnessed the inauguration of his design. ^' On 
foot/' as the historian records the incident, " and with a lance 
in his hand, the Emperor himself led the solemn procession; 
and directed the line which was traced as the boundary of the 
destined capital : till the growing circumference was observed 
with astonishment by the assistants, who at length ventured to 
observe, that he 'had already exceeded the most ample measure 
of a great city. '^ I shall still advance,^' replied Constantino, 
" till He, the invisible guide, who marches before me, thinks 
proper to stop.'' The wall of Constantino, however, though 
extended far beyond the limits of Byzantium, enclosed but five 
of the seven hills subsequently included within Constantinople. 
The new city had already covered the sixth hill, and reached 
the summit of the seventh, in the time of the younger Theo- 
dosius, by whom the wall, which encompasses that part of it, 
was built. In his time the circumference of the city, not count- 
ing its suburbs, numbered about ten miles, extending considera- 
bly beyond the city as originally designed. Constantino urged 
on his work with the zeal of one who wielded all the resources 
of the Eoman world ; and daily the Propontis was burthened by 
deeply-laden ships bearing to the new capital the choicest marbles 
from the quarries of the east and west. There is one thing, 
however, which Power cannot command— Grenius. Constan- 
tino looked in vain for architects and sculptors worthy of second- 
ing his enterprise. Besolved to produce what he could not 
discover, he founded schools of art in various provinces of his 
empire ; and in the meantime, unwilling to wait for their tardy 
results, he despoiled those provinces of their chief treasures 
of art. 



OF GREECE AND TURKEY. 323 

It was within little more than fifty years after its foundation 
that Constantinople first beheld the face of a hostile host. Elated 
by the defeat of the Roman array, and the death of the Emperor 
Valens, the Groths, suddenly relinquishing the siege of Adri- 
anople, appeared in arms before the capital of the East. For 
some days they stood in amaze, astonished by its vastness and 
richness, and not less by the throngs of terrified citizens who 
darkened the roofs of its temples, or clustered upon its inacces- 
sible walls. Those bulwarks, however, rose superior to such 
arts of attack as the barbarians commanded ; and, while their 
greedy eyes were fixed upon them in hopeless desire, a sally 
made by a body of Arabian horse in the Emperor's service 
routed the Scythian cavalry, and induced a general flight. This 
irruption of the Goths took place in the year 378. Constan- 
tinople was again exposed to a danger not less imminent but a 
short time after the glories of Justinian's reign, and the build- 
ing of St. Sophia. In the year 559 the Bulgarians and Scla- 
vonians crossed the Danube, which had been frozen over by a 
winter of peculiar severity, and advanced under the command 
of Zabergan, through Macedonia and Thrace, till they had 
arrived within twenty miles of the imperial city, at that time 
left almost undefended by the absence of the Roman armies on 
the distant frontiers of Persia, Africa, and Italy. Justinian 
trembled in his palace, and commanded the sacred vessels of 
gold and silver to be removed from the churches in the suburbs. 
In his service, however, he still, though reluctantly, retained 
an aged warrior, who had learned not to put his trust in princes, 
but in whom the people put trust. Belisarius, for the last time, 
sought the field, attended by a small and motley band of pea- 
sants and citizens, whom his name made strong, and after a 
short conflict the barbarians retreated in confusion^ and fell 
back upon their native wastes. 

A yet severer trial assailed Constantinople in the year 626, 



324 PICTURESQUE SKETCHES 

while the Emperor Heraclius was absent on that expedition 
against Persia — the most marvelous, perhaps, which had 
adorned the annals of war since the campaign of Hannibal. 
Each of the contending monarchs, careless of his proper safety, 
and leaving his own dominions comparatively undefended, had 
at the same moment, aimed a mortal blow at his rival's heart j 
and while Heraclius was capturing city after city on the banks 
of the Araxes and Tigris, Chosroes sent an immense army to 
occupy Chalcedon and co-operate with the hosts of barbarians 
— Russians, Bulgarians, and Sclavonians — which advanced in 
a southerly direction against Constantinople. For ten succes- 
sive days the northern walls of Constantinople sustained and 
beat back the assault of 80,000 men, who shot their arrows 
from the summit of wooden towers, lofty as the walls them- 
selves, and darkened the air with unceasing volleys of darts and 
stones. The G-reeks, however, were masters of the sea ; and 
the Persian army at the southern side of the water, could but 
watch the progress of a strife in which they were unable to take 
a part. Heraclius at last succeeded in sending 12,000 chosen 
troops to the aid of his capital : the Senate and the people 
seconded their absent monarch with heroic constancy; and 
after a protracted siege the armies of the Avars and of the 
Persians were alike compelled to retreat. 

The next sieges which Constantinople sustained were those 
by the Arabs. The first took place within forty-six years of 
the flight of Mahomet from Mecca, that is, A. D. 668. The 
Saracen naval forces passed without difficulty the channel of 
the Hellespont, and cast anchor within a few miles of the city. 
Day after day the assault was carried on with all the ardor 
which fanaticism can add to the spirit of conquest. Grreek 
fire, however, which at that time but began to be known, burned 
with a fiercer flame even than that of religious enthusiasm ; it 
drove the Saracens back in confusion and defeat ; and though 



OF GREECE AND TURKEY. 325 

they renewed the war during the six successive yearS; they 
were ultimately obliged to abandon their enterprise, after the 
martyrdom, as it was called, of thirty thousand Moslems, in- 
cluding the celebrated Ayub, or Job, whose name continues to 
consecrate the part of the city in which he fell. 

The next Arab siege of Constantinople took place in A.D. 
718. Moslemah, the brother of the Caliph Soliman, conduct- 
ed 120,000 Arabs and Persians to the Hellespont, and crossing 
the strait at Abydos, reached Constantinople without meeting 
an obstacle, and pitched his camp opposite to its wall at the 
land side. Kejecting the offers of the Greeks, who would 
fain have bought him off, he quietly awaited the arrival of the 
Egyptian and Syrian naval force, reckoned at the almost in- 
credible number of 1800 vessels. They arrived at last, and 
the same night was fixed by the brother of the Caliph for an 
assault by land and sea. The innumerable fleet was sweeping 
before a favorable breeze to the mouth of the Bosphorus, when 
its fate overtook it. The fire-ships of the Grreeks drifted in 
amongst them; in a moment, the ^^ moving forest^' was in 
flames, and in a few hours a few half-burned beams, weltering 
along the surface of a calm sea, were all that remained of all 
that mighty array. The army of Moslemah suffered as severely 
from frost and snow as his naval forces did from fire ; a 
winter of unusual severity thinned his ranks, and after a 
siege of thirteen months his camp was broken up. 

The next foe that appeared before the walls of Constanti- 
nople came from the frozen regions of the north. The Eus- 
sians had become acquainted, through trade, with the wealth 
of the great southern metropolis, and thirsted for spoil. De- 
scending from the Euxine in their light canoes, they passed 
the Bosphorus first in A. D. 865, and took possession, almost 
without opposition, of the port of Constantinople. The Em- 
peror Michael, who had been absent from his capital, made his 
28 



326 PICTURESQUE SKETCHES 



way back, and, landing at the critical moment, asked counsel 
of the Patriarch. At his suggestion he commanded a garment, 
supposed to possess miraculous properties, to he dipped in the 
sea. The relic was brought forth from the sanctuary, and no 
sooner had it touched the water than (as the legend records) 
a tempest rushed along the wave, before which the invading 
host was scattered. On three several occasions the Russians 
renewed the assault. The second attack was made A. D. 904, 
but proved as unsuccessful as that which preceded it. The 
third attack was made by Igor, A. D. 941 ; but his armament 
was destroyed by Grreek fire, and the larger number of the 
assailants were either burned or drowned. The fourth Russian 
assault was made by Jaroslaus, the grandson of Igor, A. D. 
1043. The Grreeks succeeded once more in repulsing it, though 
not without great loss on their side. 

The Norman invasion of G-reece, A. D. 1146, was not with- 
out consequences to Constantinople. The Norman fleet, under 
the command of G-eorge, the Admiral of Sicily, delivered from 
captivity Louis the Seventh of France, who had been basely 
intercepted by the Greeks while returning from his unsuccess- 
ful crusade, and in a short time afterwards made its unexpected 
appearance under the walls of Constantinople. The Norman 
force was too small to inflict injury, but not to offer insult; and 
the Sicilian admiral, as he floated past the palace, fired his 
silver-headed arrows into its windows, and landed a few soldiers, 
who rifled the fruit-trees of the royal gardens. Far difierent 
in character was the attack of the Latin Crusaders in A. D. 
1203, when the French and Venetian forces invested Constan- 
tinople by land and sea, and the blind old doge, Dandolo, 
standing on the prow of his galley in complete armor, and with 
the standard of St. Mark above his head, sailed up to the en- 
trance of the Golden Horn, and leading the Italian force to a 
task apparently hopeless, was the first to leap on shore. Con- 



OP GREECE AND TURKEY. 827 

stantiuople tlien learned, for the jBrst time, that it was not im- 
pregnable : the usurper Alexis was deposed, while the "blind 
Emperor Isaak was redeemed from his dungeon, and once more 
seated on the throne. 

The second siege by the Latins, under the command of Boni- 
face, Marquis of Montserrat, was the most fatal in its character 
which Constantinople had yet sustained; and the excesses 
which attended its capture stamped upon the conquerors a dis- 
grace equal to that which the conquered incurred by their pu- 
sillanimity. Besides an unbounded waste of treasure, and all 
the enormities which attend the pillage of a city, the religious 
animosities between the east and west gave rise to scenes of 
sacrilege and abomination, equaled only by the orgies of the 
first French revolution. The churches were plundered, the sa- 
cred chalices converted into drinking-cups, the altars into gam- 
ing-tables, and the relics of the saints were trampled under 
foot. The cathedral of St. Sophia itself was broken open; the 
veil of the sanctuary was torn down for the sake of its gold 
fringe; mules laden with its sacred vessels and treasures of 
silver and gold were goaded with daggers and swords across the 
marble pavement; ribald songs were chanted in ridicule of the 
Oriental hymns; a prostitute was seated on the throne of the 
Patriarch; the tombs of the emperors were violated; and the 
body of Justinian, exempt, as is asserted, from decay, after the 
lapse of so many centuries, was exhibited before the eyes of 
the licentious soldiery. The destruction of works of Art was 
on a scale almost unprecedented. The most precious statues of 
antiquity were broken to pieces in the spleen of the moment, 
or melted down and coined into money for the payment of the 
troops. Countless libraries were burned, and manuscripts 
which never can be replaced were destroyed. Long, indeed, 
will the world have cause to lament the second capture of Con- 
stantinople by the Latins, A. D. 1204. 



3^8 PICTURESQUE SKETCHES 

Once more, in the year 1261, there was heard in Constan- 
tinople at the dead of night the cry of a foe who had secretly, 
and at a desperate risk, entered its walls. Alexius, however, 
the general of the emperor Michael, had the popular sentiment 
on his side. No sooner was the alarm sounded than it was 
responded to by the shouts of the G-reeks, who had not yet 
forgotten their native sovereigns. " Victory to Michael and 
John'' resounded on all sides. Baldwin, the last Latin em- 
peror, was awakened but in time to make his escape by sea ; 
and twenty days after his expulsion, Michael Palaeologus was 
installed on the vacant throne. With as little expense of 
blood, Constantinople was again taken -by John Cantacuzene, 
in the year A. D. 1347. 

The attacks which, during successive centuries, the walls of 
Constantinople had sustained, were but the rehearsal of the 
tragedy in store. That power, which, as early as the year 668, 
had appeared in arms before them, had continued century after 
century to watch for their downfall. The might of Islam 
burned to fling itself upon the ancient Christian capital, and 
was resolved to hang about its neck until one or other had 
perished. In that wonderful career of success which had 
attended it within but a few years of the prophet's death, the 
capture of Constantinople had been its highest aspiration. That 
aspiration was never lost sight of; for instinctively and in- 
veterately the crescemt hated the cross. 

The fatal hour had at last arrived. On the sixth of April, 
1453, Mohammed II. planted his standard before the gate of 
St. Romanus, and commenced that siege which ended in the 
loss to Christendom of what had for so many centuries been 
revered as her eastern metropolis. One thing alone, it is pro- 
bable, could have averted that calamity. Had it been possible 
to heal the great schism in the church, the western world would 
not have calmly stood by to witness the downfall of eastern 



OF GREECE AND TURKEY. 329 

Christendom. After a separation of six centuries, the Greek 
and Latin churches had been solemnly reunited at the Council 
of Florence, A. D. 1438 ; but on the return of the emperor, 
and the prelates who accompanied him, all that they had 
effected was disowned, and the flames of religious hatred broke 
out more furiously than ever. The consequences were fatal. 
Distracted by their own internal quarrels, the princes of west- 
ern Europe could spare neither time nor thought, neither 
money nor arms, to protect from the Ottoman invasion a 
Christian power with which, it not being in communion with 
them, they had little religious sympathy, and with which, 
owing to its remoteness they had no other bond. Strange in- 
deed it may seem that in such an hour all minor points of 
difference should not have been overlooked; but religious ani- 
mosities, like family quarrels, are ever the bitterest, not from 
human perversity chiefly, but because the sympathies upon 
which they jar are the tenderest, and the ties which they break 
are the most sacred. No doubt, also, many of the European 
powers rejoiced in having a pretext for inaction. The pope, 
instead of inciting them to the support of the Greeks (and the 
brave defence they made proves that a very slight assistance 
would have been sufficient), prophesied ominously their ap- 
proaching ruin; and if he relented at the last moment, the 
time for succor was gone by. The only aid which they received 
was that of 2000 strangers under the command of the Genoese, 
Justiniani; while even the Genoese colony of Galata stood 
neuter — contented with the prospect of being the last devoured. 
With no other foreign succor, the last Constantino, at the head 
of four or five thousand household troops, and a few monks and 
citizens, held at bay for several weeks the Turkish force of 
258,000 men. One effort more had but a few months pre- 
viously been made to unite the churches. Cardinal Isidore of 

Russia, the pope's legate, had been sent to Constantinople to 

28* 



330 PICTURESQUE SKETCHES 

negotiate a peace: tlie emperor had listened attentively to his 
admonitions ; and the representatives of hoth commnnions had 
attended a high service in St. Sophia's, in which the names of 
the eastern and western patriarchs were commemorated in 
union. The two parties, however, thus for a moment united, 
had but met like the horns of the bow, and separated with as 
fierce a revulsion. The cathedral, supposed to have been pol- 
luted, was deserted as profane: the popular excitement rose 
almost to the height of insurrection ; and Constantinople was 
torn asunder by religious factions as furious as those which had 
tormented Jerusalem in her last agony. It was on this occa- 
sion that the first minister of the empire declared that he would 
rather see the turban of Mahomet in Constantinople than the 
cardinal's hat. He had his wish. 

The events of that terrible siege can never be forgotten by a 
sojourner at Constantinople. Everything that he sees and 
hears is a memorial of it, and the spot is still pointed out close 
to the widest breach in the wall, on which the heroic Constan- 
tino was seen last before his death. Never, perhaps, was so 
unequal a battle so long and so direfully contested ; and even 
at the last it seems probable that Mahomet would have been 
repulsed by those mighty walls, had he not resorted to an ex- 
pedient almost without precedent in the annals of war. Finding 
that success was not to be hoped for except through a double 
attack by sea and land, and unable to force the narrow channel 
of the Bosphorus, he transported his lighter vessels by land, 
dragging them in a single night over the high grounds of Gra- 
lata, and launched them again in the shallow waters of the har- 
bor, inaccessible to the deeper ships of the Greeks. He was 
thus enabled to construct a floating battery, which opened its 
fire upon the weakest part of the city walls, and a breach was 
ere long effected. Disaster followed up disaster, and within a 



OF GREECE AND TURKEY. 331 

few days four towers^ near the gate of St. Romans^ had crum- 
bled to the ground. 

The conclusion ceased to be doubtful ; but Constantine, re- 
solving that the Eastern empire^ like its last monarch, should 
perish by an honorable death, refused all disgraceful conditions 
of peace. After consulting his astrologers, Mahomet fixed the 
29th of May as the day for the final assault. On the previous 
day he harangued his chiefs, and sent heralds through the camp 
who threatened with his implacable displeasure all who might 
shrink from their duty, and dervises who promised to the 
brave the gardens, the rivers, and the black-eyed virgins of 
Paradise. The ardor of the troops burned with a steady flame, 
and the camp resounded with shouts of " There is no God but 
Grod ; and Mahomet is his Prophet." 

History contains no passage more solemn or more pathetic 
than the last farewell of the Greek chiefs summoned by Con- 
stantine to his palace, the night before the general assault. 
The emperor, in his final appeal, held out small hopes of suc- 
cess ', but the heroic band needed none, resolved to die in the 
discharge of duty. They wept; they embraced each other; 
finally they repaired to the cathedral of St. Sophia, and for the 
last time before that fane was converted into a mosque, par- 
took of the Holy Communion. The emperor asked pardon of 
all whom he might ever have injured, and received from his 
people, as from his confessor, an absolution confirmed ere long 
by that of death. That sad ritual over, the chiefs mounted 
their horses once more, and each proceeding to the spot on the 
ramparts confided to his especial care, waited there for the 
morning light. 

Day broke at last, and with it the battle. The assault was 
begun at the same time by sea and land ; and in a few moments 
a mighty and multitudinous host, wielded as if by some unseen 
power like that which directs the tides of the sea, was precipi- 



332 PICTURESQUE SKETCHES 

tated to the attack. To retreat or to stand still for a moment 
became impossible, even if any in that assailing army bad wa- 
vered. Wave after wave was repulsed, but the conquering 
tide rushed on : those in the front ranks were pushed forward 
by the compact masses behind ; and the myriads who fell suc- 
cessively beneath the walls whose gaping ruins we still behold, 
filled up the trenches with their bodies, and bridged a way for 
the myriads that followed. The Pachas of Romania, and Ana- 
tolia and Syria, and every eastern province that bowed to the 
Crescent, advanced successively with jeweled turban at the head 
of their respective hosts. Attended by his household troops, 
and holding an iron mace in his hand, Mahomet IT., seated on 
horseback close by, witnessed every assault, and rewarded every 
high action with his eye. During a temporary lull, the voice 
of the emperor was heard urging his exhausted band to one 
effort more. At that moment, Mahomet, lifting his mace, 
gave the final sign; and the irresistible Janissaries, whose 
strength had been reserved until then, rose up and dashed them- 
selves on their prey. From that instant the details of the bat- 
tle were lost in clouds of smoke and flame, and the clamor of 
drums, trumpets, and attaballs. It is only known that Jus- 
tiniani, wounded in the hand by an arrow,. and despairing of the 
event, abandoned the walls in spite of the remonstrances of the 
emperor. Constantino himself continued to fight to the last, 
surrounded by his nobles and friends, who strengthened them- 
selves, as their ranks thinned, by shouting his name. The last 
words which he was heard to utter were, " Cannot there be 
found a Christian to slay me ?^' Fearing to fall alive into the 
hands of the enemy, he cast aside the imperial purple, and min- 
gling in the thickest of the battle, was struck down by an un- 
known hand, and buried beneath the press of the slain. In 
another moment, Constantinople was in the hands of the Turks. 



OP GREECE AND TURKEY. 333 

The vast size of the city prevented the news of its capture 
from spreading for some time to its remotest quarters. The 
sudden silence was probably the jfirst intimation of the fatal catas- 
trophe : and what that silence meant, the people refused to ask. 
While the battle thundered around the walls, and even to the last 
moment, there were multitudes of fanatics who believed that a 
divine interposition would yet come to their relief. An enthu- 
siast, as wild as any that shook his lean fist in scorn of Titus 
and his legions from the glowing roofs of the Temple, had 
prophesied that the Turks would indeed force their way into 
Constantinople ; but that, as soon as they had penetrated as far 
as St. Sophia's, an angel would descend from heaven, and, 
delivering a fiery sword to a poor man seated at the foot of 
Constantino's column, would say to him, "Take this sword and 
avenge the people of the Lord." The commissioned minister 
of wrath was then to arise, and drive the invaders back to their 
burning sands. It is thus that Ducas, a cotemporary, com- 
ments on their expectation. "Had that angel appeared; had 
he offered to exterminate your foes if you would consent to the 
union of the church, even then in that fatal moment you would 
have regretted your safety, or have deceived your G-od." The 
alternative was not ofiered. When the fatal news had spread, 
the panic-stricken population of Constantinople, urged by an 
irresistible instinct, rushed with one accord to the long deserted 
shrine of St. Sophia. No angel but the angel of Retribution 
met them there. In a few minutes the senators and their 
slaves were bound together in couples; the prelate and the 
court-jester were goaded along side by side; the hands of the 
matron were tied together with her veil, and those of the nun 
with her sacred girdle; and on all sides were heard, the wild 
farewell and the wails of despair. Another sound, ere long, 
was heard above that lament. From the loftiest pinnacle of 



S84 PICTURESQUE SKETCHEB 

St. Sophia, the clear voice of the Muezzin, piercing the golden 
sunset, proclaimed "There is no God but God;" and in a few 
minutes more Mahomet II. offered up his thanksgiving before 
that high altar at which Constantine had the night before 
received the communion, and at which, a few months earlier, 
the united worship of the two churches had been solemnized. 

Such records as I have briefly referred to possess, for the so- 
journer at Constantinople, a life and reality with which the 
annals of perhaps no other city are endowed. They accompany 
him in his walks; they sit beside him at his hearth; and they 
follow him to his pillow. In his dreams they revisit him ; and 
in the morning the glorious vision which meets his eye appears 
to him at first scarcely more substantial than a dream. In the 
heart of an empire that visibly totters to its fall, and in the 
midst of a sentenced city, it is impossible to build on the present 
alone, or to avert the mind from the memory of those great 
mutations of fortune in time past which herald changes yet to 
come. At Constantinople, likewise, the appeal to the senses is 
so strong, that we^ must either become wholly materialized, or 
take refuge in imagination and retrospection. This may, per- 
haps, be one reason why the Turk himself, in the midst of his 
sensuous paradise, is thrown, as if for rest, on the thought of 
death, and loves the cypress cemetery even more than the garden 
of roses. He, too, believes that his race is destined one day to be 
driven from its royal encampments on the European shore ; and 
he is contented to believe it. Night after night, as I wandered 
by the sea, a mournful memory of the past, and a mournful pre- 
science of the future, clung about me — especially the night before 
my departure, as, standing on the beach, I watched the crescent 
of a waning moon, which dropped behind a vast and precipitous 
barrier of endless cloud, incumbent over the deep. As the 
last divided points of light disappeared, a low peal of remote 
thunder, prophet of the storm, rolled forth above the waters, 



OF GREECE AND TURKEY. 335 

and I could hardly help fancying it an omen of approaching 
doom. The next day I set sail again for the west; nor was it 
till many an hour after the domes and minarets of the seven- 
hilled city had sunk below the wave that I could fling off that 
impression. 



THE END. 



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